Hey folks, I’m dev at a Shopify app here (we do marketing-y stuff, won't name it because I don't want this to look like a plug). Looking for honest takes from merchants and other app devs.
So I spent the last few weeks building an MCP server that exposes most of our platform. Idea was to plug it into a chatbot we'd build inside our dashboard so merchants can ask questions in natural language, and get responses as well as perform actions.
Then halfway through scoping the chatbot I had a "wait a minute" moment, why am I building this? If a merchant has Claude or ChatGPT, they can just connect our MCP and get the same thing for free. I'd be burning eng time, paying for LLM tokens, doing evals, dealing with hallucinations and abuse, all to rebuild what Claude.ai already does well.
But then I keep going back and forth:
Do Shopify merchants actually use Claude/ChatGPT with MCP? Like… realistically? My gut says most store owners I talk to are not editing JSON config files to add MCP servers
Sidekick is in the admin already and seems to be where Shopify is pushing everyone, should I just be focused on getting our app to work nicely with Sidekick instead of building our own chat?
Klaviyo, HubSpot, Intercom all built their own AI chat layers and seem to be charging real money for them. Are they making good money or is it vanity engineering?
For internal use (our support and CS team), it feels obviously stupid to build something custom when ChatGPT Business or Claude for Work seats exist and the team can just connect to the same MCP.
So question to the sub:
Merchants - when an app you use ships an "AI assistant" inside their dashboard, do you actually use it? Or do you just paste stuff into ChatGPT?
App devs - has anyone here gone the MCP-only route and regretted it (or not)? Or built the in-app chat and wished they hadn't?
Anyone - is the AI chat layer actually a moat, or is the moat just the data/MCP and the chat is commodity?
Leaning towards a thin chat in our dashboard that just calls the same MCP under the hood, plus keeping the MCP public for power users and our internal team. But I'd love to be told I'm wrong before I go burn another month on this.
Thanks 🙏
TLDR : Should I build an internal chat interface for my Shopify app so users can interact with it in natural language, or should I focus on creating a powerful MCP and let users access it through whichever client they prefer?