How to Build Shopify Flow Automations by Describing Them to AI

Shopify Flow has always been one of the most useful free tools on the platform and one of the least used. The reason is simple: building a workflow means thinking in triggers, conditions, and actions, and most merchants open the editor once, see an empty canvas, and close it.

That barrier is mostly gone. You can now describe the automation in a sentence and have Sidekick draft the workflow for you. This guide covers how to do it, the automations worth building first, and the checks to run before you switch one on.

How it works

Per Shopify's changelog:

1. Open Flow in your Shopify admin. Install it first if you haven't. It's a Shopify app.
2. Click the Sidekick icon.
3. Describe the automation you want.
4. Sidekick generates a workflow with a trigger, conditions, and actions, and opens it in the editor.
5. Test it, adjust it, and activate it yourself.

Two details matter. It's desktop only. And nothing runs until you activate it, so a draft can't do any harm sitting in the editor.

It's available on the Basic, Shopify, Advanced, and Plus plans.

Why this is different from asking a chatbot

When you ask an assistant "which products are low on stock?", you get an answer once. Tomorrow you have to ask again.

A Flow runs every time its trigger fires. It's watching at 3am on a Sunday. So the test for whether something belongs in Flow is easy: is this a thing I'd otherwise have to remember to check? If yes, automate it. If it's a one-off question, just ask. Our guide to checking inventory with AI shows the two side by side.

How to describe an automation

A workflow has three parts, and a good prompt names all three:

• When something happens (the trigger)
• If a condition is true (optional, but usually what makes it useful)
• Then do this (the action)

Compare:

Help me with inventory.

with:

When inventory for any variant drops below 5 units, send an email to ops@mystore.com with the product name, variant, and remaining quantity.

The second one gives Sidekick a trigger (inventory changes), a condition (below 5), and an action (email, with specific contents). It can build that.

Use real values. A real threshold, a real tag name, a real email address. Placeholders become placeholders in the workflow, and you'll have to fix them by hand.

Eight automations worth building first

Shopify names tagging, notifications, inventory alerts, and scheduled automations as the typical uses. Here are prompts to try in each. Drafts vary, so treat what comes back as a starting point and read it against what you asked for.

Inventory

1. "When inventory for any variant drops below 5 units, email me the product name and quantity left."
2. "When a product's total inventory reaches zero, add the tag 'sold-out' to the product."

Order tagging

3. "When an order is created with a total over 300 dollars, add the tag 'high-value' to the order."
4. "When an order is created with a shipping address outside the United States, add the tag 'international'."

Customer tagging

5. "When a customer places their third order, add the tag 'repeat-customer' to the customer."

Notifications

6. "When an order is created with more than 10 units of a single item, send a message to our Slack channel with the order number."
7. "When an order has been unfulfilled for three days, email me the order number."

Scheduled

8. "Every Monday at 9am, email me a list of products with fewer than 10 units in stock."

Start with one. Number 1 is the usual favourite, because running out of a bestseller without noticing is expensive and the alert costs nothing.

Check it before you activate it

Sidekick writes a draft. You're the one who decides it's right. Go through these in the editor:

The trigger. Is it the event you meant? "Order created" and "order paid" aren't the same moment, and a workflow built on the wrong one fires at the wrong time.

The condition. Read the comparison and the number. "Less than 5" and "less than or equal to 5" differ by one unit. A missing condition means the workflow fires on everything.

The action. Check the recipient, the tag spelling, and the message contents. Tags are exact text. high-value and High Value are two different tags.

The blast radius. Ask yourself how often this will fire. An alert for "any variant below 50 units" on a store with 2,000 variants may send hundreds of emails in the first hour.

Then use Flow's test and run history. After you activate, watch the first few runs to confirm it did what you expected, then leave it alone.

Where Sidekick's draft needs your help

Shopify notes that workflows using advanced Liquid or custom code may need manual editing. In practice, the simple shape (one trigger, one or two conditions, one action) comes out clean. The more branches and custom logic you ask for, the more likely you'll be finishing it by hand.

If a draft comes back wrong, it's usually quicker to describe it again with more detail than to repair the canvas. Say what was wrong: "The condition should check the variant's inventory at the Warehouse location only."

Also remember that a Flow acts on its own once it's active. A workflow that tags is low risk. A workflow that hides products, cancels orders, or emails customers deserves a slower review and a test on a single item first.

Flow next to the other AI options

• Sidekick chat: answers and tasks, once, when you ask
• Connected Claude or ChatGPT: the same, from outside the admin
• Flow: the same task, every time, without you

They work well together. Use a chat to work out what you want ("which orders this month would have counted as high-value at 300 dollars?"), then have Sidekick turn the rule into a Flow. The full comparison is in every AI option for running a Shopify store.

The short version

1. Open Flow on desktop and click the Sidekick icon.
2. Describe the automation: when, if, then, with real values.
3. Read the trigger, condition, and action in the editor.
4. Think about how often it'll fire.
5. Activate it and watch the first few runs.

If you're heading into a sale, a low-stock alert is the one automation to have running before it starts. The BFCM prep plan shows where it fits.