Staging Workflow Advice: Headless Shopify to native Shopify migration. Build Unpublished Theme in Main Store vs Using a Separate Development Store?

Hydrogen and Storefront APIs
1

I’m rebuilding a headless Shopify site (Sanity + Vercel) into a fully native Shopify theme.
The production store already has all real products, metafields, apps, and checkout settings.

My dilemma:
Should I develop directly in the client’s main store using an unpublished theme (safer, uses real data), and only create a Development Store if I need to test destructive apps or scripts?

Is moving a theme between stores easy and reliable if I need to switch later?

Looking for best-practice advice from the community.

2

Developing the new theme as an unpublished theme in the main store is recommended, because you work directly with real data, apps, and settings while keeping it hidden from customers.​

You can still keep a dev store as a sandbox for risky tests, but treat the main store as your primary place to build and preview the new theme. Also, if you reconsider Hydrogen, it is still a strong option, and using Weaverse.io can give you a theme-customizer experience very close to native Shopify while staying headless.