"Building Sidekick: An AI Assistant People Actually Use" by Felipe Leusin

Sidekick is Shopify's AI Assistant that lives inside the Shopify Admin, transforming how hundreds of thousands of merchants manage their businesses. Building on the architectural remixing of the Admin, we'll explore how this foundation allowed Sidekick to flourish as more than just another chatbot—it's a production-ready AI assistant that can fill forms, navigate workflows, generate content, create customer segments, and even edit themes. This talk takes you through the journey of building an AI assistant that goes far beyond text responses. We'll dive into the unique challenges of integrating conversational AI into a complex, mission-critical business platform where merchants rely on Sidekick to manage millions of dollars in commerce. 00:00 Introduction and Background 03:02 Early Challenges with Sidekick Implementation 05:25 Core Skills and Context Management 11:50 Schema-First Approach and Form Handling 14:29 Evolution to MCP Server Architecture 19:06 Expanding Sidekick's Capabilities 27:08 Future Directions and Conclusions