Need clarification on Theme API / Asset API access strategy for multi-environment Public App development
Hi Shopify team,
We are a development company building and maintaining Shopify applications, and recently we encountered a platform limitation regarding Theme API / Asset API access approvals.
Our development workflow follows standard software engineering practices with isolated environments for development, staging, testing, and production deployments.
Currently, we maintain multiple independent app environments:
- Production app
- Staging app
- Development app
- Multiple local apps used individually by developers for feature development and testing
At the moment, our Production app already has approved Theme API / Asset API access.
The issue is that our development workflow requires the same Theme API / Asset API permissions across all environments, not only production.
Recently, we submitted an approval request for our Staging app, but the response we received suggested using Custom Apps instead of Public Apps for these environments.
However, this recommendation introduces a conflict with another part of Shopify’s app ecosystem that directly impacts our architecture.
Our application includes billing functionality, and we are currently planning implementation of Shopify’s new Pricing API. As far as we understand, billing functionality is not available for Custom Apps, which makes this approach impossible for our use case.
At the moment, Shopify’s current platform constraints seem to force a tradeoff that makes a standard multi-environment architecture difficult to maintain:
-
Public Apps support billing and Shopify’s new Pricing API, but obtaining Theme API / Asset API access for multiple environments currently prevents us from maintaining a proper production deployment workflow.
-
Custom Apps allow working with Theme API / Asset API functionality, but billing capabilities and Shopify’s new Pricing API are unavailable there.
Our main question is:
What is Shopify’s recommended architecture for teams building Public Apps that require multiple isolated environments while simultaneously depending on both Theme API / Asset API access and Billing/Pricing APIs?
While searching through previous discussions in this community, we noticed similar cases where developers facing comparable multi-environment setups were eventually granted access approvals for multiple apps, which makes us uncertain about what the current recommended approach is.
Relevant discussions we found on this topic:
- How to get the write_theme_assets scope
- How to use write_themes and Billing API together during development?
- Requesting write_themes / themeFilesUpsert exemption for app in development phase
To be clear — this is not a request for a single staging application approval.
This issue affects our entire development lifecycle because we require the same capabilities across all application environments as part of our normal engineering workflow.
As an app development company, we need a scalable long-term solution for maintaining multiple app environments as part of our regular development workflow.
If there is an official Shopify-recommended approach for companies building Public Apps with this type of architecture, we would greatly appreciate clarification on how this situation is expected to be handled.
Additionally, if this type of request requires review outside of the standard approval process, we would appreciate understanding which team or communication channel would be appropriate for discussing architecture-related cases like this in more detail.
Thank you.