Special Episode - Shopify Editions Winter '26 with Eytan Seidman
Liquid Weekly Podcast: Shopify Developers Talking Shopify DevelopmentShow Notes
In this special edition of the Liquid Weekly Podcast, hosts Karl Meisterheim and Taylor Page are joined by Eytan Seidman, VP of Product at Shopify, to discuss the major announcements from Winter Editions '26. Eytan reveals how Shopify is rewiring the platform to be fully AI-native, democratizing access to the Catalog MCP for building agentic shopping experiences, and introducing App Intents for Sidekick, allowing apps to register capabilities that Sidekick can invoke directly from merchant queries.
The group also dives deep into the "boring but powerful" platform updates, including massive improvements to Bulk Operations concurrency, advanced filtering and increased limits for Metaobjects, and the shift to server-side rendering for Shopify.dev.
Find Eytan Seidman Online LinkedIn: / eytanseidman Twitter (X): / eytan
Timestamps
00:00 Teaser: App Intents & Sidekick Capabilities 00:41 Intro & Welcome 01:24 Introducing Eytan Seidman, VP of Product at Shopify 02:51 High-Level Overview of Winter Editions '26 Updates 05:31 AI-Native Platform: Dev Assistant & MCP Server Updates 11:57 Technical Deep Dive: Shopify.dev moving to Server-Side Rendering (Remix) 16:38 Catalog MCP: Democratizing Agentic Shopping Experiences 23:39 App Intents for Sidekick: Registering Tools & Context 30:30 Merchant Control & Privacy in Sidekick Extensions 39:16 Boring Updates: Bulk Operations Improvements (Concurrency & Mutation Support) 42:40 Boring Updates: Metaobjects (Advanced Filtering & Increased Limits) 51:13 Eytan’s Top 3 Takeaways for Developers 54:20 Outro
Resources
Shopify Editions: https://www.shopify.com/editions Metaobjects Documentation: https://help.shopify.com/en/manual/cu... Bulk Operations API: https://shopify.dev/docs/api/usage/bu... Model Context Protocol (MCP): https://modelcontextprotocol.io/
Dev Changelog
The hosts and Eytan discuss the following updates from the Winter Editions '26 release:
AI-Native Dev Platform: The Dev Assistant and Dev MCP Server now cover the entire platform, including generating Checkout UI Extensions, modifying TOML files, and utilizing the latest Polaris components. Shopify.dev Server-Side Rendering: The documentation site has moved to server-side rendering (using Remix) to improve crawler access and performance for AI agents. Catalog MCP: Developers now have access to the full catalog of products across the merchant base (normalized and searchable) to build agentic shopping experiences. App Intents for Sidekick: Apps can now register "tools" and capabilities that Sidekick can invoke based on natural language merchant queries (e.g., "Show me my recent campaign stats"). Bulk Operations Improvements:Now supports all mutations. Concurrency increased to allow up to 5 operations per API client per shop simultaneously. New query to check the status of all running bulk operations. Metaobject Enhancements: Advanced Filtering: Query metaobjects by value ranges on metafields (e.g., filter testimonials by date range). Increased Limits: Separate pools for apps—each app can create up to 128 definitions with up to 1 million entries each.
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Taylor is in India for Shop Quest, so Karl flies solo with Charles Swayne, owner and app developer at JadePuma Apps and the person behind Datify. Charles is 21, learned Python in sixth grade, and now runs a multi-agent development workflow that researches, plans, audits the plan, executes, and tests itself before he ever looks at the code.
Georgi Petrov, CEO and co-founder of Uxify, joins Karl and Taylor to talk about the half of web performance nobody optimizes for: the shopper's device. After building SMS Bump (acquired by Yotpo), ConsentMo, and NitroPack (acquired by WP Engine), Georgi is now tackling device-specific friction, the laggy buttons, layout shifts, and interaction delays that vary wildly from one phone to the next. We get into how Uxify profiles a visitor's capability without touching your code, the specialized agents that fix problems on the fly, the ClickHouse-powered data layer behind it all, and how to think about performance heading into BFCM. Plus the Dev Changelog and Picks of the Week. Sponsor The Support Heroes: https://www.thesupportheroes.com/ Subscribe to Liquid Weekly Don't miss out on expert insights and tips. Subscribe to Liquid Weekly for more content like this: https://liquidweekly.com/ Find Georgi Online Uxify: https://uxify.com/integrations/shopify/ LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/georgipetrov/ Timestamps (00:00) Open (00:29) Intros (02:11) Meet Georgi Petrov of Uxify (02:54) Origin story: hardware hacking to his first software (06:03) Finding Shopify: SMS Bump, ConsentMo, and NitroPack (12:23) Making fast decisions and failing cheaply (15:32) Why Uxify: performance is half website, half device (20:11) How it works: profiling devices and adapting on the fly (26:17) Sitting alongside your theme without touching your code (28:26) Real user monitoring and specialized agents (37:47) The tech stack: ClickHouse and heavy browser testing (41:57) Shopify cart variations and a clever checkout fallback (46:24) Prepping for BFCM and who Uxify is for (51:14) Dev Changelog (58:22) Picks of the Week Dev Changelog [action required] Variants now support multiple barcodes: https://shopify.dev/changelog/product-variant-barcode-is-being-replaced-by-barcodes Create and delete dev stores in Shopify CLI: https://shopify.dev/changelog/create-and-delete-dev-stores-in-shopify-cli [action required] Discounts Allocator Function API developer preview has ended: https://shopify.dev/changelog/discounts-allocator-function-api-developer-preview-has-ended Delivery options in Shopify Functions input now expose their metafields: https://shopify.dev/changelog/delivery-options-in-shopify-functions-input-now-expose-their-metafields Prepare your app for the Shopify admin's new look: https://shopify.dev/changelog/prepare-your-app-for-the-shopify-admins-new-look [action required] Updates to Events payloads and subscription configuration: https://shopify.dev/changelog/updates-to-events-payloads-and-subscription-configuration New Pricing audit trail for contextual product variant prices: https://shopify.dev/changelog/pricing-audit-trail-for-contextual-product-variant-prices [breaking api change] [action required] Removed session.currentSession.staffMemberId from POS UI Extensions (2026-10): https://shopify.dev/changelog/removed-session-currentsession-staffmemberid-from-pos-ui-extensions-2026-10 Request a bundle size exception for existing UI extensions: https://shopify.dev/changelog/request-a-bundle-size-exception-for-existing-ui-extensions Picks of the Week Karl: Keto Oreo-style sandwich cookies (about 50 calories each), part of his ongoing tour through packaged keto snacks: https://www.choczero.com/products/keto-sandwich-cookies Georgi: Calisthenics between AI prompts. Knocking out push-ups and squats while waiting on an agent, which he says burns the time well and sharpens his focus when he comes back. Taylor: Ted Lasso, season 4 on Apple TV+. Still, in his words, one of the most wholesome shows around: https://www.imdb.com/title/tt10986410/
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