# Building production-ready agentic systems: Lessons from Shopify Sidekick

DevFeed: [Building production-ready agentic systems: Lessons from Shopify Sidekick](<https://devfeed.tech/articles/building-production-ready-agentic-systems-lessons-from-shopify-sidekick-1329.md>)

Original publisher: [Read original article](<https://shopify.engineering/building-production-ready-agentic-systems>)

Author: Andrew McNamara

Published: 2025-08-26T10:00:00Z

Content type: article

Language: en

Sources: [Shopify Engineering](<https://devfeed.tech/sources/shopify-engineering.md>), [Shopify Engineering - Shopify Engineering](<https://devfeed.tech/sources/shopify-engineering-shopify-engineering.md>)

Topics: [AI Engineering](<https://devfeed.tech/topics/ai-engineering.md>), [Shopify](<https://devfeed.tech/topics/shopify.md>), [Artificial Intelligence](<https://devfeed.tech/topics/ai.md>), [Architecture & Design](<https://devfeed.tech/topics/architecture-design.md>), [Large Language Model](<https://devfeed.tech/topics/llm.md>), [grpo](<https://devfeed.tech/topics/grpo.md>), [JIT](<https://devfeed.tech/topics/jit.md>), [data](<https://devfeed.tech/topics/data.md>)

Tags: [ai](<https://devfeed.tech/tags/ai.md>), [ai-engineering](<https://devfeed.tech/tags/ai-engineering.md>), [architecture-design](<https://devfeed.tech/tags/architecture-design.md>), [evaluation](<https://devfeed.tech/tags/evaluation.md>), [grpo](<https://devfeed.tech/tags/grpo.md>), [jit](<https://devfeed.tech/tags/jit.md>), [llm](<https://devfeed.tech/tags/llm.md>), [platform](<https://devfeed.tech/tags/platform.md>), [production](<https://devfeed.tech/tags/production.md>), [shopify](<https://devfeed.tech/tags/shopify.md>)

## AI overview

This article describes how Shopify evolved Sidekick from a tool-calling system into a production-oriented agentic platform. It discusses the agentic loop, scaling challenges caused by a growing tool inventory, architecture design, evaluation, GRPO training, and the use of just-in-time instructions to reduce system-prompt complexity.

## Source excerpt

Learn how we evolved our AI assistant architecture and built robust evaluation frameworks for real-world deployment.