Shopify announced a new storefront theme that reduces the amount of code required for merchant storefronts and is intended to be readable by developers with basic HTML skills.

The theme replaces the JSON‑heavy Horizon framework with a primarily HTML‑based structure that uses Shopify’s Liquid templating language, which the company says is easier for both humans and AI agents to parse.

According to Shopify product director Ben Sehl, the redesign stems from the growing use of the AI assistant Shopify Sidekick, which has performed about 25 million theme edits this year and requires clear, explicit code structures.

The new architecture includes a composable block tag, a partial primitive for localized updates, expanded documentation, and 20 policy rules governing contracts, nesting, and file‑size limits, and it supports logical expressions and future Tailwind CSS integration.

Shopify says the simplified code will benefit both merchants and AI systems, and the changes are being rolled out while maintaining backward compatibility with existing Liquid themes through a forever API.