This is a big one. Shopify Flow has had the biggest glow-up of any feature on the platform, and today we're going inside the mothership to talk to the bloke running it. Paul Nuschke leads Shopify Flow, and he joins me to unpack one of the most insane stretches of shipping in Flow's history - Sidekick integration, and so many other improvements.

We get into what it took to make Sidekick build working workflows without hallucinating itself into oblivion (fact: 40% of new Flows are now created with Sidekick), why Flow has out-shipped Zapier for Shopify use cases, and the apps doing the most interesting things with Flow connectors.

Plus: scheduled jobs vs product update triggers, why Flow doesn't do Git integration (yet), Flow vs custom middleware, and what's coming at Editions and Dotdev.

If you build apps, run a store, or you're an agency still telling clients "Flow can't do that" — this one's going to change your mind.

Bonus: I've put together a Shopify Flow Playbook to go with this episode. Link below.

Sponsor

The Support Heroes — trained Shopify support specialists who plug into your help desk, learn your brand voice, and handle your tickets like they actually give a shit. Tell them I sent you.

And one from me — Stork Credit. Dead simple, native-built Shopify app for issuing store credit instead of discount codes. Free to install.

In this episode

• Teaching Sidekick to build working workflows
• 40% of new Flows are built with Sidekick
• Using Flow templates
• The product update trigger problem (and the workaround)
• Flow as middleware — when it makes sense
• Why there's no Git integration (yet)
• App connectors — who's doing it right
• What's coming at Editions and Partner Conference

Chapters

0:00 Intro

1:08 Welcome Paul + recent Flow updates

1:34 Top-down editor, testing, Sidekick

3:26 New queries and closing API gaps

4:38 Has Flow out-shipped Zapier?

5:08 Sidekick — how big a lift was it

6:06 Teaching Sidekick to build workflow JSON

7:19 Why testing was non-negotiable

7:31 The drill-down problem Sidekick killed

8:30 Order confirmation emails + run code

10:06 40% of new Flows built with Sidekick

10:55 Sponsor — The Support Heroes

11:35 Stork Credit

12:14 Templates and the blank-canvas problem

13:10 Why describing what you want is the bottleneck

14:03 The gnarliest workflows Paul has seen

15:08 Metafields — Flow's most underrated unlock

15:25 The product update trigger problem

17:03 App-built triggers and infinite loops

18:15 Flow as middleware vs Boomi

21:09 Version control and managing Flows across stores

25:25 Why editing a .flow file outside Flow is risky

27:30 Copy to another store

28:00 App connectors — who's doing it right

30:14 Why most app-to-app integrations should use Flow

32:16 Advice for app devs building connectors

34:18 Get involved in the dev community

35:05 What's coming at Editions and Partner Conference

37:03 Wrap up