Shopify Debuts Tinker App for Store Creation in 1 Prompt

Shopify launched Tinker on Thursday (March 26), a free mobile app that replaces the fragmented AI subscription stack most merchants currently navigate with a single guided environment for building brand assets, storefronts, social content and visual identity from plain-language inputs.

According to Shopify’s announcement, Tinker consolidates more than 100 specialized AI tools, drawing on models from OpenAI, Google and Anthropic, organized not by model name or capability but by output: merchants browse by what they want to create, not by which tool produces it. The app covers images, videos, logos, product visuals and 360-degree product views. Each tool surfaces curated examples so a merchant knows exactly what it generates before committing any input.

The core mechanic Shopify built around is prompt abstraction. Rousseau Kazi, director of product at Shopify, said in the announcement that the team writes “very long prompts that are optimized for quality” and then reduces them to a few simple fields for the merchant to fill out.

The merchant describes their need in plain language; Tinker handles the technical prompting in the background. A brand described in one sentence generates a logo. A product photo becomes a social media video. Multiple creations can run simultaneously, so a founder can queue a batch of assets during a commute and review the results on arrival.

Tinker also maintains continuity across sessions. Because all assets live in a single environment, the app applies context from prior creations to new ones, preserving visual and brand consistency without having the merchant manually carry references between disconnected tools. When a new AI model launches from any of its provider partners, Tinker updates automatically, removing the recurring cost and learning curve of separately adopting each new capability.

Less Friction

The specific merchant cases Shopify cited in the announcement illustrate the operational problem Tinker aims to address. Lena, founder of jewelry brand Loire, generated more than 150 brand images for her store in her first month using the app, assets that consistently matched her feedback on the first or second attempt. The alternative, professional photography in the U.S., runs approximately $50 per shot, meaning a single product photographed from two angles costs $100 before any editing or reshooting. For a brand still building its initial catalog, that unit cost forecloses iteration entirely.

Yukiko, founder of supplement brand Allie Beauty Protein, identified a different constraint: general-purpose generative AI tools produce visually compelling images but inaccurately render product label text, a significant commercial problem for supplement brands that are legally required to include nutritional information on packaging. Tinker’s specialized prompting layer, built for specific output types rather than general-purpose generation, resolved that gap for her use case.

Shopify’s Broader Agentic Bet

As reported by PYMNTS, Shopify’s AI Store Builder, introduced in May 2025, already lets merchants generate full store layouts from descriptive keywords without writing code. Tinker extends that capability into the creative layer above the storefront, handling the brand assets and marketing materials that fill a store once its structure is in place.

The strategic logic behind both tools connects to where Shopify sees commerce heading. As reported by PYMNTS, Shopify President Harley Finkelstein argued at the Upfront Summit in March 2026 that agentic AI will act as a personal shopper, surfacing products based on contextual fit rather than keyword bids or paid placement.

In that environment, the quality and consistency of a merchant’s brand presentation carry more commercial weight than they do in a search-optimized storefront. Tinker is the tool Shopify is giving its 4.8 million active merchants to close that gap before agentic discovery becomes the primary commerce channel.

The broader market context reinforces the timing. According to Google Labs, the company introduced Photoshoot on its Pomelli platform in February 2026, a free tool that converts basic product images into studio and lifestyle imagery using its Nano Banana model, with brand context automatically applied from stored business information.

For all PYMNTS AI coverage, subscribe to the daily AI Newsletter.