We've moved fast in the Shopify space over the last year. Nearly two decades of building our own ecommerce platform meant we could fast-track our way to Shopify Plus Partner status in just five months. We've taken on existing Shopify sites, fixed long-standing issues other agencies couldn't solve, and migrated stores over from other platforms.That run of work is what took Alain and me to our first DotDev, in Toronto. Shopify put on a genuinely good conference, and it made one thing clear: the last year hasn't just been about adopting an ecommerce platform. It's been about buying into a much bigger ecosystem, one built to push us and our clients forward. We heard from Shopify's CEO Tobi Lütke and President Harley Finkelstein, along with other agency and tech partners. Here's what stuck with us.AI is changing how we all work, and how people shop. Agentic shopping got airtime, but sites and apps still play a huge part in how customers actually buy - Shopify mentioned apps generated 7X their own revenue in the last financial year. Shopify isn't trying to skip that experience altogether. They're building the infrastructure and inviting partners to build things that, until recently, weren't possible. That idea ran through the whole conference, from a few different angles.River is Shopify's own internal AI system. Their team talks to it through Slack, shipping code, creating pull requests, and getting answers just by asking. Nearly everyone at Shopify uses it daily. But the takeaway for me wasn't "go build your own River." It was the philosophy behind it: keep things simple, don't be afraid to throw work away and start again as you learn more, and keep challenging what you think is possible. That mindset is what lets them attempt the "impossible" stuff.UCP is the piece that makes all of that real. It's a protocol, and it's already live across millions of Shopify stores. The idea is simple: rather than every AI assistant, marketplace and app inventing its own way to browse...