Is Shopify AppGen going to make your app obsolete?

Hey,

Shopify dropped 200 updates in their Renaissance Edition last week.

One feature has my inbox full of the same question: Is the App Store dead?

AppGen lets merchants generate custom Shopify apps automatically. With text prompts. No coding required.

If you’re panicking, you’re asking the wrong question.

AppGen handles simple, one-off customizations. The stuff merchants used to hire developers for. The stuff they’d search the App Store hoping to find.

That was never the valuable part anyway.

The valuable part? Solving problems merchants don’t know how to articulate. Building solutions they can’t imagine. Creating workflows that require understanding their business better than they do.

AppGen can’t do that.

Neither can Sidekick Pulse, even with its proactive scanning and campaign suggestions.

These tools democratize basic functionality. They make it easier for merchants to solve known problems.

If your app’s value prop is basic functionality, you’ve already lost.

The apps that will thrive solve problems merchants can’t describe in a text prompt. The ones that required deep merchant interviews and workflow analysis. Understanding pain points that don’t have obvious names yet.

Shopify is getting better at handling the simple stuff. Flow automations built with text prompts. Theme editing through conversation. Skills that let merchants share reusable workflows.

All of this pushes app developers upstream.

Away from “here’s a feature you needed” and toward solving problems merchants don’t even know they have yet.

If AppGen can replicate what your app does, you don’t have a positioning problem.

You have a product problem.

The apps that survive this shift solve merchant problems that can’t be automated away. Problems that require human insight into merchant workflows, not just code.

What was your first thought when you saw AppGen announced?

If it was panic, we should talk.

Reply to this email and let’s figure out what you’re actually building.

Ohad