The problem

As the Owner & Engineer of Arrow Equity, Chris Gala had a plan that seemed foolproof: acquire existing Shopify apps, maintain them with minimal effort, and watch the passive income roll in. 

As a skilled frontend developer with a CS degree, he figured he could handle any minor tweaks needed to keep the apps he acquired running smoothly. It wasn’t until Shopify updated their App Bridge requirements that Chris started to realize that the upkeep of these apps would be much more than he expected.

The apps he had acquired were built with Ruby on Rails, when his expertise was in JavaScript. Despite being entirely new to both Shopify development and Ruby on Rails, Chris managed to fix the App Bridge issue with a bit of work — but the process of doing so made him come to terms with a deeper problem: The apps were built on a stack he didn't understand, and he was in over his head. 

“I had no idea what I was doing," Chris said.

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A technical nightmare

When he originally acquired the apps, his expectation was he would only need to make minor tweaks to keep them running. But with the frequency of Shopify’s updates, the maintenance burden quickly became unsustainable. 

Chris knew he needed to rebuild his apps in JavaScript—his preferred stack—but the prospect felt overwhelming. Setting up infrastructure, databases, webhooks, and Shopify connections from scratch seemed "prohibitively painful." Every rebuild would require weeks of setup work before he could even start writing the actual business logic.

The irony wasn't lost on him: he had the technical skills to build sophisticated applications, but was trapped by the operational complexity of getting started.

"The common wisdom I got was, 'don't buy stuff that you need to rebuild,'" Chris shared. "But the alternative was dealing with this very confusing Ruby on Rails codebase, and spending hours and hours digging into GitHub documentation to understand how it all works."

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A passion project turned into a chore

The constant technical struggles were eroding Chris's love for development. After years of being underutilized in CSS-heavy roles, acquiring these apps was supposed to reignite his passion for building and offer a path to meaningful development work. Instead, he found himself dreading the challenge.

"Over the last few years, my passion for development has wavered, so these apps were supposed to be fun," Chris explained. "But I wasn't really contributing that much to these projects... I was barely even writing JavaScript or TypeScript."

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The solution

When Chris discovered Gadget through the Shopify developer community, he was initially skeptical. After months of struggling with infrastructure setup and unfamiliar frameworks, another development platform promising faster builds seemed too good to be true.

But as Chris explored the platform and tried some tutorials, he began to see how it could solve his specific problems. Plus, the JavaScript-first approach meant he could work in his preferred stack. The auto-generated infrastructure would let him skip the painful setup work that had been blocking his rebuilds, The Shopify connection took seconds to set up — eliminating weeks of work he had been dreading.

"It was literally later that afternoon that I was building an actual app," Chris recalled. "The Shopify connection was spun up, all the auth and initial setup was done, and I was working on proper business logic."

Gadget offered exactly what he needed: a JavaScript-first, full-stack platform designed specifically for Shopify apps.

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AI that understands the entire stack

As Chris continued to build, he found he was having fun. It wasn’t just the infrastructure that set Gadget apart — it was the AI assistant that had complete awareness of his stack. Unlike other AI tools that worked in isolation, Gadget's AI understood the platform's unique patterns, the Shopify ecosystem, and could provide guidance specific to his project.

“I was just moving so fast," Chris explained. “The AI could review my code and catch silly mistakes, silly syntax errors. There were a few things that I would probably never catch without it."

Most importantly, building on Gadget meant Chris could work entirely in his preferred language, eliminating the learning curve that had made the Ruby on Rails apps so challenging. As someone who had built his career around JavaScript development, Chris finally felt he was working in his element. "Gadget and me are like a match made in heaven," he said.

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The results

What Chris had anticipated would take months was done in just two weeks: a complete rebuild of his Shopify app. He migrated the entire project from Ruby on Rails to modern, maintainable JavaScript infrastructure.

Rapid development and deployment

Chris successfully rebuilt his entire ID verification app in under two weeks, integrating with Stripe's API for automated ID verification and replacing the manual, error-prone system his customers had been struggling with. The new app leveraged Gadget's built-in Shopify models instead of the custom-built database structures from the original, dramatically reducing code complexity.

"To be able to do a full rebuild even on a small app in two weeks is pretty incredible," Chris shared.

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An AI assistant to bridge the skill gap

Gadget's AI assistant effectively bridged Chris's skill gaps, enabling him to handle complex backend logic, database relationships, and Shopify integrations with confidence. The AI's contextual awareness of the entire platform made the difference between struggling alone and building with confidence.

"When I have Gadget-specific questions, that's where the AI assistant really shines," Chris shared. "Gadget's assistant really does know everything about the platform, and everything about my app. No other AI is going to have that kind of information."

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A renewed passion for building

Most importantly, Gadget restored Chris's enthusiasm for development. The combination of rapid progress and manageable complexity brought back the satisfaction he'd been missing from his development work.

"When you're making meaningful progress and you can see the finish line, you can see the light at the end of the tunnel, that's a very nice feeling," he explained.

With his first rebuild successful, Chris is already working on migrating his second app to Gadget and planning ambitious new projects, including an AI-powered fashion model app for virtual try-ons. The maintenance burden that once paralyzed him is now manageable, freeing him to focus on building rather than fighting infrastructure.