Building a Magic Mirror: AI retail experiences with Remix (2026) - Shopify
Mar 19, 2026

Summary
This post details the development of a 'magic mirror' concept for retail experiences, leveraging AI for personalized customer interactions. It describes the architecture using Remix, including server-side image processing with LLMs (OpenAI SDK) and client-side state management. Key technical aspects include prompt engineering with product data and inventory, Server-Sent Events (SSE) for remote control, and client-side screen transitions. The implementation focuses on a specific use case for Rare Beauty, demonstrating how AI can be integrated into physical retail to provide personalized recommendations and interactive experiences.
More from the AI Assistant (Sidekick) Capabilities and Training trail
- Gisting: Compressing LLM Agent context to ↑ throughput and ↓ cost (2026) - Shopify
- Sidekick's continual learning loop (2026) - Shopify
- Building an agentic harness that outlasts the model (2026) - Shopify
- Teaching Sidekick to say no: automated data curation with LLM judge consensus (2026) - Shopify
- Building production-ready agentic systems: Lessons from Shopify Sidekick (2025) - Shopify