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"You can have AI build an app inside your Shopify admin." That's how Sidekick's app generation gets described, and Shopify's own examples back it up: an app that recommends reorders based on sales velocity, an app that generates discounted checkout links and QR codes.
But this one feature carries a plan requirement separate from Sidekick as a whole. The Help Center page opens with it, above the body text:
Generating apps with Sidekick is available only to stores on the Grow plan, Advanced plan, and Shopify Plus plan.
Basic is not on that list. And even if you clear the plan bar, what a generated app can reach is narrower than it sounds — there are three places it doesn't go.
Below: what Sidekick does and doesn't do, from Shopify's documentation only, and where automation apps still earn their keep. Research date: September 1, 2026.
The short version
On Basic, don't plan around app generation. App generation is the only Sidekick feature carrying a documented plan requirement, and Basic isn't on the list.
If it needs to touch the storefront or checkout, a generated app won't get there. Generated apps only work inside the Shopify admin, aren't visible to customers, and can't access themes, checkout, or customer account apps.
If you want to automate customer support, Sidekick is out of scope. The Help Center states it can't talk to your customers or handle support conversations on your behalf.
If you need data moving to and from outside services, that's an automation app, not a generated one. Generated apps reach your own store's Admin API and nothing else.
For recurring analysis and routine workflows, Sidekick is enough. You can save up to 25 prompts as skills and recall them with a shortcut.
What Sidekick does
Sidekick is an AI assistant callable from any page of the Shopify admin. It runs in two modes: chat, and Sidekick Pulse, which surfaces recommendations on the admin Home page.
The generation surface is wide. Per the Help Center, Sidekick can produce:
- Customer segments from natural language
- Discounts — amount-off product, amount-off order, and free shipping, as codes or automatic discounts
- Images from text prompts, for hero banners, marketing assets, and post illustrations
- Shopify Messaging email campaigns, including design edits to fonts, colors, and buttons
- Text in any admin field, plus blog posts and product descriptions
- Metafield values and metaobject entries
- Reports — generating valid ShopifyQL queries and creating custom data explorations
- Shopify Flow workflows, both new and edits to existing ones
The report and Flow generation are the two that replace real documentation-reading. "Show me total sales for Canadian customers over the past 60 days" becomes a ShopifyQL query.
For longer tasks, Sidekick continues working in the background even if you close the chat or navigate away, then notifies you when it's ready for review.
Prompts save as skills — up to 25
Repeated requests can be saved. The Help Center states the cap:
Create and save up to 25 prompts as skills in Sidekick to automate recurring tasks.
Saved skills run via a shortcut command, and each has a shareable URL you can hand to another merchant.
Memory retention windows
Sidekick draws on past conversations and recent admin activity. The Help Center gives numbers:
- Past conversations: about 3 months
- Recent admin activity: about 12 hours
Anything older than 12 hours isn't available. Conversations held with Sidekick in the theme editor aren't added to memory at all — to continue that work in normal chat, you restate the details.
You can turn memory off per conversation, with a catch: you can't turn it back on for that same conversation. To resume with memory on, you start a new one.
App generation: the plan gate and the walls
This is the most conditioned feature in Sidekick.
Grow, Advanced, and Plus only
The Help Center places the plan requirement in a callout before the body text: Grow, Advanced, and Shopify Plus. Basic isn't included.
This is the only Sidekick Help Center page carrying a plan-requirement block; the other feature pages have none. "Sidekick is available" doesn't imply "app generation is available." Note also that as of September 1, 2026 the plan feature pages (Basic plan, Features on all plans) don't mention Sidekick at all, so plan-by-plan availability of the other Sidekick features isn't confirmable from Shopify's documentation.
Permissions and rate limits
Staff who generate or edit apps need the App development > Develop permission. Generated apps are shared at the store level.
Generation is rate-limited hourly and weekly. The hourly limit refreshes every hour, the weekly limit every 7 days, and more complex apps consume more of the allowance. Sidekick warns you as you approach it. Specific numbers aren't published.
The three places generated apps don't reach
This is the constraint that decides most use cases.
Only your store's Admin API. The Help Center enumerates the surfaces: orders, products, customers, discounts, content (metaobjects, files, menus, and blog posts), and analytics. Six areas, and nothing beyond them.
Only inside the admin. Generated apps aren't visible to customers and can't access functions or data outside the Shopify admin — themes, checkout, or customer account apps. If the point is to show something on the storefront, this isn't the tool.
Only on a desktop web browser. App generation is available only when you use Sidekick in the Shopify admin from a desktop web browser. Not in the Shopify app on iPhone, Android, or tablets, and not in the admin via a mobile browser.
Shopify also notes that generated apps can change customer-facing data, and tells you to test thoroughly before installing. The app editor creates a version on each update and lets you restore an earlier one.
Sidekick's stated limitations
Beyond app generation, the Help Center lists what Sidekick can't do at all:
- It can't talk to your customers or handle customer support conversations on your behalf
- It can't share private information or data from other Shopify merchants
- It can't make changes to your store without your approval — it presents options for review
- It can't make edits to images within a store theme or your product list
- It isn't available when you use the Shopify admin in a mobile browser
The first item is the one that matters most for anyone evaluating "AI for our store." Sidekick is a merchant-side assistant, not a customer-facing channel.
Where automation apps still apply
Once the boundary is clear, so are the reasons to install something else.
Data moving to and from outside services. Generated apps touch only your own Admin API. Writing to Google Sheets, posting to Slack, dropping files over FTP, syncing with an ERP — all outside the line.
Coded automation on Basic. App generation starts at Grow.
Anything customer-visible. Generated apps run inside the admin only.
Branching logic Shopify Flow can't express. Sidekick generates Flow workflows, but only within Flow's own capabilities. Asking for something Flow can't do doesn't produce it.
Execution reliability and logging. Generation is rate-limited, but the Help Center says nothing about run-time retries or error logs for generated apps.
Two automation apps, compared
Two apps with different metering, both as listed on the Shopify App Store on September 1, 2026.
| Mechanic | MESA: Workflow Automation | |
|---|---|---|
| Developer | Lightward | ShopPad Inc. |
| Rating (reviews) | 5.0 (129) | 5.0 (153) |
| Built for Shopify | Yes | No |
| Pricing unit | Tied to your Shopify plan | Monthly task count |
| Free plan | No (15-day trial) | Yes (50 tasks/mo) |
| Pricing | $16 / $29 / $99 / $199 | Free / $12 / $29 / $99 |
| Authoring | Liquid | Natural language, no-code |
| Named integrations | Google Sheets/Drive, Slack, Airtable, FTP, Webhooks | 130+ ecommerce apps, ChatGPT, Etsy, Google Sheets, Odoo, Salesforce |
| Languages | English only | English only |
Three things the table shows.
The metering units aren't comparable. Mechanic prices against your Shopify plan — $16 for Basic Shopify, $29 for Grow, $99 for Advanced, $199 for Plus — and states "no additional usage charges." Run count doesn't change the bill. MESA meters on monthly tasks: 50 free, 500 at $12, 10,000 at $29, 50,000+ at $99.
High run volume favors Mechanic. Thirty thousand tasks a month puts you on MESA's $99 Pro tier; on Mechanic, a Grow-plan store pays $29. At a few dozen tasks a month, MESA's free tier covers it.
The authoring model changes who can use it. Mechanic is written in Liquid — the same language as Shopify themes. Low learning cost if someone on the team has touched theme code, a real barrier if nobody has. MESA leads with natural-language construction.
Mechanic
Best fit: high run volume, with someone who can write Liquid.
Key features: 355+ prebuilt automations, custom automation in Liquid, integrations with email, Google (Sheets, Docs, Drive), Slack, Airtable, and FTP. Integrates with Shopify Flow. Multi-store is in the feature list.
Strength: Built for Shopify badge, 5.0 across 129 reviews. Lightward's "pay what feels good" policy appears on every tier, framing listed prices as suggested.
Watch out for: no permanent free plan — a 15-day trial only. English only. The Liquid-first model limits what a team with no code exposure can get out of it.
Pricing: as of September 1, 2026 — $16 / $29 / $99 / $199, presented as the suggested price for your matching Shopify plan.
Right for: stores running high automation volume with theme-code capability in house.
MESA: Workflow Automation
Best fit: outside-service integration, starting small.
Key features: event- and schedule-triggered runs, connections to 130+ ecommerce apps, notifications and alerts, templates for common ecommerce workflows, natural-language build. ChatGPT, Etsy, Google Sheets, Odoo, and Salesforce are named.
Strength: 50 free tasks a month means you can validate before paying. 5.0 across 153 reviews, with the US-based support team repeatedly called out in them.
Watch out for: task-count metering means cost steps up as order volume grows, and there's nothing between 500 tasks ($12) and 10,000 ($29). English only. The trial is 7 days.
Pricing: as of September 1, 2026 — free / $12 / $29 / $99. 30% off annual.
Right for: integration-led automation with a predictable monthly run count.
Picking by situation
Faster reporting and analysis in the admin
Sidekick. ShopifyQL query generation and custom data explorations are in the feature list. Save the recurring ones as skills — up to 25.
An internal tool for the admin
Sidekick app generation, if your use case fits Grow-or-above, desktop browser, and the six Admin API surfaces. Shopify's own examples: reorder recommendations, a team task tracker, customer lookup with discount creation.
Automation on Basic
App generation isn't available. Map what Shopify Flow can express first; if you need more, MESA's free tier is the low-risk next step.
Integration with outside services
MESA or Mechanic. MESA's free tier while run volume is unknown; Mechanic once you know it's high.
Automating customer support
Neither Sidekick nor either app here. Sidekick explicitly can't handle customer conversations, and Mechanic and MESA are both admin-side. That's a separate chat/helpdesk category.
Pre-install checklist
- Is your plan Grow or higher? (This decides app generation outright.)
- Does what you want to build stay inside the admin, or does a customer need to see it?
- Is the data you need within the six Admin API surfaces — orders, products, customers, discounts, content, analytics?
- Will you be working from a desktop web browser?
- Can you grant staff the App development > Develop permission?
- Do you need data moving to and from outside services?
- Roughly how many automation runs per month? (This decides the metering choice.)
- Does anyone on the team write Liquid?
- Can you verify the effect on customer-facing data before installing a generated app?
Bottom line
Four steps, in order.
- Check your plan. The only Sidekick feature with a documented plan requirement is app generation, and it starts at Grow. That's the first fork.
- Decide whether the thing you want stays inside the admin. If customers, themes, or checkout are involved, generated apps are out.
- Decide whether outside services are involved. If yes, it's an automation app, not Sidekick.
- When comparing automation apps, compare the metering unit, not the monthly price. Mechanic is flat against your plan; MESA meters tasks. Which is cheaper flips depending on run volume.
Pricing and features change. Check each app's Shopify App Store listing and the Help Center before you commit.
Sources
Every Shopify variant has a barcode field, and Shopify now has native bin locations and a native pick list. What it still has no screen for is the one moment that actually prevents a mispick: scanning an item at the packing bench and having Shopify say yes or no. Shopify POS barcode scanning is documented for adding products to a cart, searching, and receiving transfers — not for verifying the line items of an online order. We priced seven real US App Store apps on September 2, 2026 and found they meter five different things: orders, scanning stations, users, fulfillments, and flat rate. At 5,000 orders a month the same job costs $14.99 with Fulfil-IT ‑ Scan & Pack and $938 with Pickware ERP & WMS.