When I built Kotn’s first store 12 years ago, I knew how to code and it still took me two weeks just to get to something OK, years to get to something I liked. We built the tool I wish I had back then. Here’s Canvas.

@kotn HUGE!!! Congrats!!

@kotn YES BEN!

@kotn This looks incredible, @benjaminsehl! Congrats to the team on the launch!

@kotn whoa this looks nice!

@kotn dying to see what you do with this Jeff!!

@kotn So good! Congrats Ben.

@kotn WOW! This looks very cool! Also, longer hair Ben is look'n suave.

@kotn Epic 🙌🏻

@kotn Thank you, Alex! Excited to see what you're able to build!

@kotn 👏

@kotn I would dive into this now... how do we get into early access?

@kotn Rolling out now but I'll DM you

@kotn thank you i was literally just thinking i need to finish rebuilding the theme editor

@kotn Holy shit Ben with hair

@kotn Dude, this is so freaking cool. I love the canvas view and something I've always wanted in a store builder. Q: Can you still control details and settings with a traditional panel as an optional view? Nice job, bud!

@kotn Def gonna try it. The theme editor was def feeling obsolete lately that I rebuilt my own version of it

@kotn so, currently no support for app blocks, embeds, translations, markets?

@nicklenko @kotn Insane - this is incredible

@kotn Most of the best seller themes in the market have been the opinionated ones. Restricting merchants to keep things useful in every combination. Canvas looks a bit unhinged but it also looks intelligent enough to achieve tidy ups. Can't wait to try. Btw I like your hair!

Thank you king! We’ve got lots of thoughts on how we can bring intentional limitations to what people can do in their theme. I hinted at some of the thinking back at Dot Dev ( — but there's more to come. We're just on day 1 here, and we'll be shipping updates every week. The most important thing for me was to get Canvas out there early so we could get the community involved and start iterating.

I've read this one, explains the thought process really well. I imagine block-level restrictions, especially on revenue-critical parts for technical issues. With Tailwind joining Shopify, DESIGN.md with tokenized rules will help keeping the brand in place. We use this system on our last 3-4 builds, guardrail/freedom balance has been great.

@kotn When you combine extensible linting/theme check, and a great integration into customizable github workflows — I think we can get to a really nice place. Few other tricks in mind too.

Indeed! Tailwind builds on GitHub workflows worked great for us. We've built climaybe for managing all these (quite opinionated at this point to be oss but it's still there) A more native version control system would bring a lot to the table.

@kotn oh my god ben this is so good

@kotn Haven’t had time to check the docs yet, but I wonder how do theme extensions behave in all this?

@kotn This just came after I spent over 2weeks redesigning my storefront. 😂😂Good to know 👍🏿🙏🏾🙏🏾

@MSchwaibold @kotn Let’s goooo

@kotn Wonderful! I’ve been using and I love it!

@kotn this looks fantastic

@kotn Can't wait to try this out! Will it work on Horizon or need a new theme?

@kotn Oh woooow! Congrats :o (can I have a very little access to try?)

@kotn It is incredible to see how much the workflow has changed since those early days. We actually went deeper on this here:

@kotn The 'two weeks to OK, years to liked' line is the whole thesis — most site builders collapsed time to zero but capped the ceiling. The bet here is raising the ceiling while keeping time at zero. Real test: can a non-coder ship something a designer would be proud of?

@kotn so good

@kotn without giving away the sauce, is it roughly json shaped that then pipes changes directly into liquid?

@kotn New ERA! Incredible work!