Connect your store
Connect Shopify
Shopify is the one required connection. It gives HI Engine your catalogue, your orders, and the theme files it needs to write a change.
Without Shopify, HI Engine has nothing to read and nothing to build on. Connect it first.
Your HI Engine contact does the connection for you, as part of onboarding. Your part is two clicks.
How it is set up
Approve the collaborator request
HI Engine sends a collaborator request to your store. Approve it in your Shopify admin under Settings → Users → Collaborators.
A collaborator account is Shopify's own mechanism for giving an agency access. You can withdraw it at any time from the same page.
Your contact creates the app
Using that access, your contact creates a custom app inside your store, grants the scopes listed below, and installs it.
You never handle an access token. Nothing is emailed or pasted.
The connection is checked
HI Engine runs a test read and marks the connection active. You see it under Connections in the app.
The scopes it uses
These are the permissions the custom app holds. Nothing outside this list is granted.
| Scope | Why HI Engine needs it |
|---|---|
read_products | Read products, variants and collections |
read_orders | Read order volume and value, to size an opportunity |
read_inventory | Read stock levels, so a proposal does not point at a sold-out product |
read_locations | Required by Shopify alongside read_inventory |
read_themes | Read your live theme, to find the right template or section |
write_themes | Create a draft theme and write the change into it |
read_locales | Read your active languages |
write_translations | Update translated strings on a change you approve |
write_themes is what lets HI Engine build. Without it, the agent can still
find and size problems, but it cannot ship a fix.
Draft themes only
write_themes lets HI Engine create and write to a draft theme. Publishing
a theme to your storefront is a separate action in your Shopify admin, and only
you can take it.
What HI Engine never does
- It never reads payment details.
- It never charges, refunds or cancels an order.
- It never deletes a product, a collection or a theme.
- It never publishes a theme to your storefront.
Credentials are encrypted at rest and never reach a browser. See Data and permissions.
Revoking access
Remove the collaborator under Settings → Users → Collaborators, or uninstall the app under Settings → Apps and sales channels → Develop apps. Either one cuts access immediately.
Work already published to your theme is yours and stays where it is.
Troubleshooting
The two common causes are an uninstalled app and a withdrawn collaborator. Check both in your Shopify admin, then tell your HI Engine contact — reconnecting is done on their side.
That is almost always a missing write_themes scope. Tell your contact. Adding
a scope requires reinstalling the app, which they handle.
Shopify allows 20 themes per store. When the library is full, no new draft theme can be created.
Delete themes you no longer need under Online Store → Themes. Keep the theme that was live before your most recent publish, so you retain a one-click rollback.
How it works
The find, size, ship and test loop in detail — what runs on a schedule, what waits for your decision, and where each step is visible in the app.
Connect Google Analytics 4
GA4 supplies sessions, device splits and funnel steps. It is what turns "this looks wrong" into "this costs about €400 a month".