Idea
Start a serious project first. SFTR, short for Shopify Theme Renderer, is meant to load enough theme structure locally that we can inspect templates without a live store round-trip for every change.
Status
We got as far as proving the shape of the problem. The AI was good at scaffolding the parser boundaries and hopeless at knowing which bits of Liquid and Shopify data would bite later.
Problems Faced
- The agent kept reaching for a generic Liquid mental model instead of Shopify's weird edges.
- We had to keep correcting assumptions about global objects and template context.
Techniques That Helped
- Treat every generated abstraction as suspect until it touched a real theme file.
- Keep examples tiny so the wrong assumptions surfaced fast.
Lessons Learned
This is exactly the kind of project that makes AI look useful for acceleration and dangerous for certainty. Good start. Very unfinished.