Shopify DotDev 2026: notes from Toronto

I was in Toronto the week of Shopify DotDev, July 21 and 22. I love that city, and I'm glad this event keeps pulling me back. Only the main stage was recorded this year, so everything below comes from my own notes from the rooms. A few weeks have passed since the event, which turns out to be useful. The announcements that still matter after the buzz fades are the ones worth writing about.

The new base theme is in developer preview

The headline if you run a Shopify store: the next-generation base theme went into developer preview at the show. I picked up the preview on day one and have been building with it since.

The short version is Liquid you can actually read. Shopify's own comparison puts it at roughly 93 percent fewer lines of code than Horizon. That is a smaller, clearer foundation for a custom storefront, not a new coat of paint on the same files.

The part I didn't expect: Shopify is formally acknowledging that AI tools work inside theme code, and giving them a documented place to read from. I've run a similar convention on client projects for a while, so this one felt like validation. Two numbers from the stage explain why they did it. Sidekick made 25 million theme edits this year, and one in five merchants now uses AI to edit their theme.

Two things worth being precise about. Existing themes keep working, and there is no forced migration. Your current theme is fine. And Tailwind support was announced as coming soon, but it has not shipped. If you read a recap claiming Tailwind is live in Liquid today, it isn't.

I'll publish a deeper technical writeup of the new architecture separately. This is the summary.

If a redesign or replatform is on your roadmap for the next year, the architecture conversation has changed. The new base theme is where Shopify's investment is going, and builds started now should account for that direction.

UCP is open, on purpose

Ilya Grigorik, who authored the Universal Commerce Protocol, said it plainly on stage: UCP is an open protocol, and anyone can extend it without asking permission.

That's a bigger statement than it sounds. It means category-specific data, things like product compatibility or sizing standards, can be built by whoever ships first. Early extensions to open protocols have a way of becoming the standard everyone else adopts. If your category has structured data that agents need to make good buying decisions, the window to define that structure is open right now.

Catalog attribution puts real money behind agentic surfaces

Shopify announced an attribution model for purchases that flow through surfaces built on the Catalog API and UCP: a 0.3 percent base rate, paid by Shopify to the owner of the app behind the surface, with merchants able to layer their own incentives on top. None of it has shipped, and no date was given. But the direction is set. Agentic commerce now has an economic model attached, not only a technical one.

One detail I'd flag before anyone plans a build in this space: the attribution goes to whichever Partner account the app is registered under. App ownership belongs in the contract before work starts, not after the checks show up. More on that in a future post.

Shop account personalization for Catalog surfaces was also announced. Same status: coming, not shipped.

Configuration that survives a theme swap

Taylor Page's session on metaobjects was the talk I keep coming back to. The idea is simple once you see it. Theme settings only exist inside the theme. Configuration stored as metaobjects exists everywhere the platform can read it, including checkout, mobile apps, and Flow.

That distinction changes how I structure client builds. Decisions that used to live locked to one theme can live in data the whole stack shares. When you eventually change themes, the configuration comes with you.

The Block Party

Shopify closed things out with a block party on Princes' Boulevard, food trucks lined up and what felt like the whole conference in one place. I spent most of the evening with Taylor Page and Karl Meisterheim, sampling our way down the row of trucks and talking to everyone we could. A great way to end the two days. The sessions carry the announcements, but the conversations are where you find out what people are actually doing with them.

Brightwork

The day following the conference, Taylor and Trudy put together a community event called Brightwork, with a panel and a room full of people who build on Shopify every day. With most conference sessions unrecorded this year, events like this are where the useful details surface, the caveats and edge cases that never make it into a keynote. Worth the extra day, and I hope it runs again next year.

What this means if you run a store

Nothing here requires action this quarter. Your theme keeps working, and the attribution economics aren't live yet.

But if a redesign is coming, plan it against the new base theme. That is where Shopify is putting the investment.

Agentic commerce moved from concept to roadmap at this event. Agents can only buy from stores they can read, which makes structured product data and server-rendered pages practical requirements, not nice-to-haves. AI crawlers don't execute JavaScript, so if your product data only exists in the browser, it doesn't exist to them.

And if you are building anything on Catalog or UCP, put app ownership in the contract now. Catalog attribution, when it ships, pays the Partner account the app is registered under.

If you want to talk through what any of this means for your store, my calendar is at https://braundesign.co/meet30.