Shopify unveiled Canvas on October 1, 2026, a visual site-building workspace that lets merchants create and customize stores by chatting with Sidekick, the company’s AI commerce assistant. Canvas displays all store pages in one pannable, zoomable view and renders the underlying theme code live, allowing merchants to see actual changes, inspect details, test interactivity and animations, and review layouts across screen sizes before approving them. Shopify’s Ben Sehl said a fully custom store can now take about 20 minutes rather than two weeks of coding. Canvas builds on Sidekick’s existing abilities to write code, build apps and customize themes, while Shopify simplified its theme architecture to make store structure, logic and design easier for the AI to modify. The rollout is gradual, and the launch version does not support third-party theme app extensions, Rollouts, Markets or Translations. Shopify plans to add those capabilities before making Canvas the default editor. Sidekick usage has also expanded, with weekly active shops up 385% year-over-year in the first quarter of 2026 and about 42% of Shopify merchants using its AI features.