Working with the agent
Reviewing a build
How to check a draft theme properly, and what Approve, Comment and Reject each do.
When a build finishes, you get a Preview changes link. This is the step where your judgement matters most. Take the ten minutes.
Open the preview
The link opens your storefront rendered from the draft theme, with the change applied. Everything else in the store is exactly as it is today.
Nobody else sees this. It is not live, and it does not affect your traffic, your analytics or your orders.
What to check
Look at it on a phone
Most stores take most of their traffic on mobile, and most layout problems only appear there. Open the preview link on your own phone, not only in a desktop browser's mobile view.
Check every state the change can be in
A change on a product page has more than one state. Walk through the ones that apply:
- A product that is in stock, and one that is sold out.
- A product with one variant, and one with many.
- A product with a long title, and one with a short one.
- A product with a sale price, and one without.
Check the pages around it
A section added to the product page also renders on every product page. Open three or four different products, and at least one collection page.
Read the copy
Any text a shopper reads should sound like your brand. If it does not, that is a comment, not a rejection — the copy sits in a theme editor setting and is quick to change.
Then decide
Once the draft looks right, the question is not ship or do not ship. It is ship to everyone, or ship to half.
Queue it for a test first
Testing is the default path. Approve the build, then set up an A/B test rather than publishing to all of your traffic. The test tells you whether the change earned money. Publishing straight to everyone only tells you that it went live.
Publish to everyone without a test in two cases:
- The change fixes something plainly broken — a control that does not respond, a price that does not show, a layout that breaks on a common phone. There is nothing to learn from testing a repair.
- Your traffic cannot produce a result in a reasonable time — splitting a page in half halves the visitors each version gets, so a quiet page can run for months without the difference ever becoming statistically significant. Ship it and watch the trend instead.
HI Engine tells you the expected duration before a test starts, so you can see which case you are in. Everything else is worth the wait.
The three decisions
Approve & Publish
The change is right. The task closes and you get the Shopify theme editor link. Set up a test from the task before you publish the theme.
Comment
You want something changed. The agent iterates on the same draft theme.
Reject
This build is wrong. It goes back to the backlog. The idea survives.
Approve & Publish
This marks the task done and replies with the Shopify theme editor link for the draft theme.
It does not go live yet
Approve & Publish does not put the theme on your storefront. Open the draft theme in your Shopify admin and publish it there. That step is always yours.
Comment
Write what you want changed. Be specific about the outcome, not the implementation — "the badge should sit under the price, not above it" is enough.
The comment lands on the task thread and notifies the team. The agent iterates on the same draft theme, so your review link keeps working. You get a note when the new version is ready.
You can comment as many times as you need. A task is not finished until you say it is.
Reject
Rejecting sends the task back to the backlog and rolls back this implementation attempt. The idea survives — only this build is discarded.
Use Reject when the approach is wrong. Use Comment when the approach is right and the details are off.
If the idea itself is wrong for your store, dismiss the idea on the Ideas board instead. See Ideas.
Queue the test
From the approved task, open the A/B test setup. It asks for three things:
- A hypothesis — what you expect to change and why. HI Engine drafts one from the idea's evidence.
- The tool — HI Engine, Intelligems, Shoplift, Shopify Rollouts, or another platform you name.
- The variant, for tools where you run the split yourself.
A/B tests covers each option and what it needs from you.
Publishing to your storefront
Do this when the test won, or when the change belongs in the two cases above.
- Open your Shopify admin → Online Store → Themes.
- Find the draft theme named after the task.
- Click Actions → Preview one last time if you want.
- Click Publish.
Your previous live theme stays in the theme list. Publishing it again is a one-click rollback. See Rolling back.
After publishing
Tell HI Engine, or click through from the task. It starts measuring the change against the period before it.
A before-and-after comparison is weaker evidence than a test — seasonality, a campaign or a competitor's move all land in the same window. Treat it as a direction, not a proof.