By Chris Ledden · Reviewed October 2026
I use AI on Daily Bloom all the time. It drafts our product descriptions and collection pages, and it helps me write theme code. I’m not here to talk you out of it.
But the tools have gotten fast. Shopify’s Sidekick can now change your theme from a plain-English request, write code, and build custom apps for your admin from a prompt. The change takes seconds. Nothing checks it afterward unless you do.
Here are the five things I check before any change goes live on Daily Bloom, whether AI made it, a developer made it, or I did.
1. Make the change on a copy, not your live store
Duplicate your theme first (Online Store, Themes, then the … menu next to your theme, then Duplicate). Make the change on the copy, preview it, and publish only when you’re happy with it. Shopify recommends the same thing.
It matters because undo is limited. Shopify’s code editor keeps older versions of individual theme files, but it can’t roll back a whole theme, and it can’t bring back a file that was deleted.
2. Check your speed afterward
Every app and every block of code adds a little weight to your pages. Shopify’s web performance reports (Analytics, Reports, then search “web performance”) show how fast your store loads for real visitors. They also mark app installs and theme updates on the timeline, so you can see whether a change slowed things down. Give it a couple of days, because the data can lag by up to 36 hours.
At Daily Bloom, our real-visitor load time went from 3.9 seconds to 1.3 seconds after we rebuilt the theme and cut our apps. It would be easy to give that back one convenient change at a time.
3. Check it on your phone, all the way to checkout
Most changes get previewed on a laptop. Most of your shoppers are probably on their phones. Open your store on your phone and do what a customer does: find a product, pick a size, add it to the cart, and get as far as checkout. If a change broke something, that’s usually where it shows up.
4. Check what a new app can see
When AI suggests an app, or builds one for you, that app still gets permission to parts of your store. Before you install anything, Shopify’s install screen lists what it will be able to do, grouped under “View personal data” and “View and edit store data.” Expand both and read them.
After it’s installed, Settings, then Apps, shows each app’s activity over the last 30 days, which of its permissions touch sensitive customer data, and when those permissions were granted or changed. If you uninstall an app, its access ends, and Shopify asks the developer to erase the personal information it collected.
5. Clean up what you replaced, and write it down
AI is happy to add a new app or a new block. It won’t remind you to remove the old one. When something new replaces something old, uninstall the old app. Newer apps that use app embeds clean up after themselves, but older ones often leave code in your theme files that keeps loading after you’ve stopped paying for them.
My one hard rule: never remove the old thing until the new one is proven live. Then keep a simple record of what changed and when. When I change code at Daily Bloom, every file gets a db- prefix, a changelog entry and a commit to GitHub. For most stores, a shared note with the date and what changed is plenty.
Questions
Sources: Shopify’s Winter ’26 Edition on what Sidekick can do; Shopify Help Center on web performance reports, editing theme code, and app permissions and personal information; Shopify’s March 2026 update on app activity and permissions.