Admin App Development Frameworks

3/19/2026

This post details the development of a 'magic mirror' concept for physical retail experiences, leveraging AI and Remix. It describes the architecture, including a Remix route file that handles both server-side actions (LLM calls, SSE broadcasts) and client-side components. Key technical aspects include prompt engineering for LLMs (using vision input, JSON output schema, and product catalog as plain text), product matching logic, Server-Sent Events (SSE) for remote control, a client-side state machine for managing the user experience, and detailed prompt tuning strategies for safety and consistency. The implementation emphasizes a configurable approach, allowing for easy adaptation to different brands and events.

6/30/2025

This post details the migration of admin.shopify.com to the Remix framework. Key technical contributions include: 1. Implementation of route manifests (TypeScript files alongside component code) to create a static, single source of truth for all Admin routes, enabling systems like Search and Sidekick to ingest route metadata at build time. 2. Leveraging Remix loaders to flip the data fetching paradigm, allowing data fetching to begin in parallel with component code loading, significantly improving page load times. 3. Standardization of loading experiences across all routes using Remix loaders and view transitions, eliminating inconsistent loading patterns and "flash of empty content". 4. Unlocking intelligent prefetching by executing route loaders during idle browser time to warm the Apollo cache, further improving perceived load times. 5. Integration of Remix actions and zod schemas to enable AI assistants like Sidekick to understand page data needs, available forms, and validation requirements, turning complex UI interactions into I/O functions for AI.

7/26/2023

This post introduces Remix as the recommended framework for building Shopify Admin apps, highlighting its performance benefits and alignment with web standards. It also details a significant update to App Bridge, a message-based protocol for iframe communication. The new App Bridge embraces modern web development technologies, including a CDN-hosted script for immediate fixes, the use of Custom Elements for enhanced integrations, and aims to make standard web development practices and libraries work seamlessly within iframes.