In this episode of Liquid Weekly, Karl and Taylor reconnect after Taylor's anniversary trip to Barcelona, diving into their latest Shopify development work including theme blocks, app development challenges, and the evolving AI tooling landscape. 

Episode Highlights:

• Taylor's experience transitioning from sections/blocks to theme blocks and the mental shift required
• Karl's EtherCycle app development progress and webhook filtering solutions
• Discussion of AI coding tools: Claude Code, Cursor, Kiro, and GPT-5 comparisons
• Taylor's Barcelona travel stories and balancing client work while on vacation
• The challenges merchants face adapting to theme blocks in themes like Horizon
• Karl's clever solution for filtering Shopify webhooks per shop to reduce infrastructure overhead
• Four-year anniversary milestone for the Liquid Weekly newsletter

Timestamps:

00:00 - Introduction and Barcelona recap

15:30 - Theme blocks learning curve and documentation

28:45 - AI coding tools comparison and workflow

35:20 - App development updates and webhook solutions

45:10 - Travel work-life balance and client management

52:30 - Shopify Dev Changelog

57:00 - Picks of the Week

Resources:

• Horizon theme (now open source) - https://github.com/Shopify/horizon
• Jan's Horizon customization video - https://www.shopifyacademy.com/video-...
• Shopify customize webhook filters - https://shopify.dev/docs/apps/build/w...
• Raycast - https://raycast.com/?via=taylor
• Warp terminal - https://app.warp.dev/referral/2WY6RV
• Kiro AI coding tool - https://kiro.dev/
• Claude Code - https://www.anthropic.com/claude-code
• Cursor CLI - https://cursor.com/en/cli

Dev Changelog:

• Request app reviews in admin with the new Reviews API - https://shopify.dev/changelog/request...
• New: Support for nested cart lines - https://shopify.dev/changelog/new-sup...
• [action required] _tracking_consent, _landing_page, _orig_referrer cookies will no longer be set - https://shopify.dev/changelog/trackin...
• [action required] _shopify_y and _shopify_s cookies will no longer be set - https://shopify.dev/changelog/shopify...
• [action required] Deprecation of the checkout_and_accounts_configurations/update webhook - https://shopify.dev/changelog/depreca...

Picks of the Week:

Karl: Taylor (awwwww)

Taylor: Kindle Paperwhite - https://amzn.to/3UL74CB