The Future of Code: A Gadget Hackathon was a full-remote, week-long app building event, where we challenged developers to build a Shopify app from start to finish. We believed that with Gadget, it was possible. And now that our week of building has come to a close, we can confidently say that’s true.

We had more than 250 developers and teams register to accept the challenge, many of which have full time jobs, leaving them with fewer hours to spend building their apps. But despite the time crunch, more than 40 apps were created during the competition — here are the winners. 

Best overall: Smart Sections

Bigside Tech built an app that creates AI-Powered, auto-populated website sections for Shopify stores. Shopify has already taken away so much of the setup that goes into an online store, but there are still small details when it comes to marketing products that a lot of merchants want more control over. Oftentimes, that means contracting an agency or theme specialist to build customizations for them, but with Smart Sections, that’s all taken care of.

What’s next for Smart Sections?

Bigside Tech has sent their app into the review process to have it published on the Shopify app store, and over the coming months has plans to offer more diverse section options. They also see an opportunity for possible developer partnerships, so other Shopify app developers can submit their own sections — but that’s still just an idea for now.

Best use of AI: Visionary

The team behind Visionary created an app to automatically generate product descriptions using nothing but a product photo. For many merchants, creating product descriptions is a time consuming and tedious task, but an essential one nonetheless. Visionary works by feeding a product photo into Azure Cognitive Services, which generates a description of the photo, then passing that description to OpenAI to generate the final product description.

What’s next for Visionary?

The team plans to improve the experience by incorporating streaming to account for the wait time that goes along with processing AI-generated responses. Keep an eye out for Visionary on the app store!

Most technically impressive: Stylist.ai

The LogBase team went above and beyond with their AI-focused tool, Stylist.ai, an app to increase the average order value for Shopify apparel merchants. Using intelligent cross-sell recommendations the app creates AI-generated apparel combinations, such as shirts and trousers, to encourage buyers to explore full outfits rather than individual items, increasing a merchant’s revenue potential.

What’s next for Stylist.ai?

LogBase created the app as a standalone tool, or an extension of their existing app, SellEasy, and the team has plans to expand their recommendations to include women’s clothing.

Best use of Shopify checkout UI extensions: Formify

Nextools Tech created Formify, a tool for merchants to create custom forms and add them to their checkout without any coding required. Forms can be used to collect additional information from buyers such as product preferences, delivery instructions, or any other relevant details. Forms can be created with a user-friendly drag-and-drop interface, and they integrate natively into Shopify checkout flow using new checkout ui extensions. All the additional data is saved into metafields associated with the order.

What’s next for Formify?

Formify has already been submitted to the app store and is currently in the review process. The team hopes it will be live and available for merchants to download in the coming days — stay tuned!

Best use of Shopify Functions: Shop Logic

The team from Shopcraft submitted a no-code function builder for the Cart and Checkout Validations Functions API, allowing non-technical merchants to take more control over their checkout experience, by easily creating function logic with an eye to prevent fraud and reduce their chargebacks.

What’s next for Shop Logic?

General improvements, an app store submission, and maybe some more AI integration are all on the horizon for Shop Logic – the sky is the limit.

Honorable mentions

Building a full app in under a week is no small feat, and so amazing work to everyone who made the attempt. We’d also like to extend honorable mentions for the following:

Shopdocs‍

An app and an accompanying theme for merchants to build their internal business documentation without ever leaving Shopify.

Hemiro‍

An app to analyze a merchant's store, perform some keyword research, and generate a unique article for SEO purposes, with the ability to save, edit, publish, and delete articles.

Chatify‍

An app to create custom chat widgets using theme app extensions, so buyers can engage with AI, receiving tailored product recommendations specific to the store.

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Congratulations again to all the winners, and thank you to everyone who joined, participated, and submitted their entries. It was difficult for our four judges to pick out just five winners among so many amazing submissions. 

If you want to build your own Shopify apps, sign up for a free Gadget account and join our developer Discord for help getting started.