Overview
- Shopify moved its consumer Shop app from React Native to fully native code using agent-driven automation and completed the production rewrite in about 12 weeks.
- The company built Helix to manage the process by slicing the migration into screen-by-screen tasks, running automated comparisons and tests, and requiring human sign-off before merges.
- Engineers reworked the codebase to help agents, separating business logic from UI and adding a CLI interface that speeds many checks from minutes to milliseconds.
- Shopify’s team found simple zero-shot prompts produced low-quality, unmaintainable code, and the company warns that large agent runs can be costly and can create extra verification work for engineers.
- The firm is now preparing to apply the same agent-orchestrated approach to its much larger 300-plus screen merchant app, a move that could speed platform-specific development but raise new testing and maintenance burdens for teams.