Need clarification on Sidekick app extension listing warning: “must align with stated app functionality”

Shopify App Store
1

Hi,

We received a warning for our app OrderRules - Store Open Limits with the following required change:

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“Sidekick app extensions must align with your app’s stated functionality. Remove or update Sidekick capabilities that do not match your App Store listing.”

The app listing page also shows this message:

“Sidekick app extensions must operate within the scope of your app’s core functionality. To ensure platform integrity and merchant transparency, your extension configuration, public App Store listing, and actual runtime execution must be materially consistent. Tools, intents, and actions exposed to Sidekick must be a logical representation of what your app does for the merchant on its own surface.”

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However, we are not seeing a specific flagged item, field, tool, instruction, response, or listing section that explains what exactly needs to be changed.

Our Sidekick integration is read-only and only surfaces data related to what OrderRules already does inside the app, such as:

  • Store business hours / opening schedule
  • Storewide order limits
  • Product, variant, and collection limits
  • Per-customer order limits
  • Holiday closures / blackout dates
  • Remaining order capacity

We want to ensure full compliance with the requirements, but the warning does not specify the exact mismatch. And we are not sure what the actual issue is here.

Could someone from Shopify or the community help clarify:

  1. Where can we see the specific Sidekick extension issue that triggered this warning?
  2. Is this usually caused by the App Store listing not mentioning Sidekick support clearly enough?
  3. Should our listing explicitly state that merchants can check OrderRules limits and remaining capacity from Sidekick?
  4. Could wording in the Sidekick response, such as asking whether the merchant wants to “adjust” rules, be considered misaligned if the integration is read-only?
  5. Is there a recommended review path after we update the listing, extension summary, or tool descriptions?

We keep the integration tightly scoped to OrderRules’ actual functionality and would appreciate any guidance on what Shopify expects here.

Thanks in advance.

2

Hi @Jahangir,

Based on Shopify’s Sidekick documentation and the new App Store requirement 2.2.8, reviewers will check whether your Sidekick extension matches your app’s main purpose.

For OrderRules, allowing merchants to view business hours, order limits, blackout dates, holiday closures, and remaining capacity through Sidekick seems relevant and compliant.

I recommend checking that the following are consistent:

  • extensions_summary in shopify.app.toml
  • Extension and tool descriptions
  • Sidekick instructions and responses
  • Your public App Store listing
  • The extension’s actual runtime behavior

If the extension is read-only, Sidekick should not suggest that it can update or modify rules. Also, clearly mention these Sidekick capabilities in your App Store listing so reviewers understand how the extension supports OrderRules.

3

Hey @Jahangir - thanks for flagging and for the detailed response.

I dug into this on our end. The evaluation evidence points to two tools declared in your Sidekick extension configuration whose functionality isn’t currently described in the App Store listing:

  • get_analytics, which provides revenue, average order value, top products, busiest days, and sales or capacity analytics.
  • get_subscription, which provides the OrderRules plan, trial status, pricing, and included features.

The rest of the evaluated functionality, such as store schedules, order limits, customer limits, and delivery rules, appears connected to functionality already described in the listing. This isn’t a full approval of those capabilities, but the two above are the specific examples identified by the evaluation.

The available options appear to be removing those two Sidekick capabilities or updating the listing to materially describe them. With that said, I’m still confirming that interpretation internally so use this information as general guidance only with that in mind.

This level of detail isn’t currently available without reaching out to us, so I’m also looking at how we can make these error messages clearer and capability-specific in the Partner Dashboard, so developers can see which capability triggered the warning and where to look instead of having to infer it from a generic message. Until then, anyone in a similar scenario can use help.shopify.com to open an authenticated support ticket.

The public requirement is documented here: New App Store requirements for Sidekick app extensions - Shopify developer changelog

I’ll follow up with in this thread once I have more to share. Hope this helps in the meantime!

5

Hi @Wes-Dev-Shopify thank you for checking this internally and sharing the specific details. This is very helpful.

We reviewed the warning based on your feedback. In our case, get_subscription was used only to let merchants check their own OrderRules subscription details, such as plan, trial status, pricing, and included features. It was not intended as a promotional capability or anything outside the app.

However, based on the current App Store listing alignment requirement, we removed get_subscription from the Sidekick extension, and the warning has now been lifted.

That said, I think there may be a small contradiction or gap here that could use further clarification.

For example, app subscription details are a normal part of the app experience for merchants. But at the same time, Shopify App Store listing guidelines generally do not allow pricing or plan-specific details to be placed inside the main listing description. Because of that, we did not include subscription/pricing-related text in the listing.

So if a Sidekick capability is related to subscription or plan details, but pricing information cannot be clearly described in the App Store listing, it becomes unclear how developers should keep that capability “materially consistent” with the listing.

Also, the App Store description has a 500-character limit, so it may not always be practical to describe every supported Sidekick capability in detail, especially for apps with multiple read-only tools.

It would be helpful if Shopify could provide guidance on whether Sidekick-specific capabilities can be described somewhere else, such as:

  • A dedicated Sidekick capability section
  • App feature bullets
  • App documentation
  • The extension summary/configuration
  • A separate merchant-facing help page

For now, removing get_subscription solved the warning for us, but I think a more structured way to declare these capabilities would help developers avoid similar confusion.

Thanks again for the detailed response and for looking into making the warning messages more capability-specific in the Partner Dashboard. That would be very helpful.

6

Hey @Jahangir - thanks for sharing this feedback. It helped us identify a real gap in how this warning is presented.

We’re working on adding the names of the Sidekick tools that triggered the check to the error messaging for more transparency. We’re also taking into account your other feedback regarding the App Store limitations and how they square with the Sidekick app extension requirements. I’ll follow up in this thread once I have more to share.

7

Hi Wes, thank you for the follow-up.

Really appreciate you checking this internally and confirming that the current warning message can be improved. Showing the specific Sidekick tool names that triggered the issue would be very helpful for developers and would save a lot of guesswork.

Also glad to hear the team is considering the App Store listing limitation side as well, since some valid app capabilities are difficult to fully describe within the current listing fields and character limits.

Thanks again for taking the feedbacks. Looking forward to any updates you can share.