Empowering Devs with AI: How Shopify Made GitHub Copilot Core to its Culture

Shopify, a global leader in e-commerce platforms, has embraced this paradigm shift by integrating GitHub Copilot—an AI-powered code completion tool—into the heart of its engineering culture.

This case study explores how Shopify leveraged GitHub Copilot to empower its developers, boost efficiency, and foster a culture of innovation, offering valuable lessons for organizations seeking to harness AI in their development processes.

Join Farhan Thawar, Shopify’s VP and Head of Engineering, as he discusses how Shopify, an e-commerce platform that builds at incredible scale, is unlocking the potential of its developers with AI tooling like GitHub Copilot.

Learn strategies to increase developer empowerment with the adoption of AI tooling, measure the success of your GitHub Copilot adoption, and prepare for the downstream effects of increased developer productivity.

Background: Shopify’s Commitment to Innovation

Shopify’s mission has always been to make commerce better for everyone, a goal that extends beyond its merchant-facing products to its internal engineering practices.

With a team of approximately 4,000 engineers working on a vast ecosystem built primarily in Ruby, Shopify’s engineering organization is a powerhouse of creativity and technical expertise. However, as the company scaled, it faced the challenge of maintaining developer productivity and satisfaction amidst growing complexity and demands.

Recognizing AI’s potential, Shopify initially deployed it to enhance merchant experiences—such as generating product descriptions—before turning its focus inward. In early 2022, Shopify became an early adopter of GitHub Copilot, a tool developed by GitHub and OpenAI that acts as an AI pair programmer, offering real-time code suggestions based on context. What began as a technical preview evolved into a cornerstone of Shopify’s engineering culture by 2023, with profound impacts on its workflows and team dynamics.

Early Adoption and Experimentation

Shopify’s journey with GitHub Copilot began in January 2022, when Farhan Thawar, VP and Head of Engineering, reached out to GitHub CEO Thomas Dohmke to secure early access. As an organization accustomed to building at scale, Shopify saw Copilot as an opportunity to unlock new levels of developer potential. The initial rollout targeted a subset of its engineering team, allowing Shopify to experiment and gather qualitative feedback.

Unlike traditional productivity tools, Shopify approached Copilot with a unique philosophy: it prioritized developer happiness over quantitative metrics. Thawar emphasized that programming is as much an art as a science, arguing that artistic endeavors should be evaluated through subjective experience rather than rigid numbers like lines of code written or time spent. This mindset shaped Shopify’s adoption strategy, focusing on whether Copilot made engineers feel more fulfilled and empowered.

Scaling Across the Team

By mid-2023, Shopify had scaled Copilot usage to roughly half of its 4,000 engineers—approximately 2,000 developers—making it a significant part of its development ecosystem.

The tool’s seamless integration into popular IDEs like Visual Studio Code and JetBrains, coupled with its ability to support Ruby (Shopify’s primary language), facilitated widespread adoption. Engineers reported that Copilot reduced the friction of starting projects, particularly in unfamiliar languages or frameworks, by providing a starting point akin to an “interpreter” rather than a blank slate.

Shopify also introduced Copilot Chat and Copilot Docs by late 2023, enhancing its capabilities with conversational AI and documentation support. These features allowed developers to ask questions, generate unit tests, and access context-aware explanations, further embedding Copilot into daily workflows.

Measurable Impacts

While Shopify eschewed traditional productivity metrics, the qualitative and anecdotal evidence of Copilot’s impact was compelling. Drawing from broader industry research and Shopify’s own observations, the following benefits emerged:

• Increased Productivity: Studies like those from GitHub suggest Copilot can accelerate coding by up to 55%. At Shopify, engineers noted that Copilot’s autocomplete suggestions and boilerplate generation freed them to focus on higher-level problem-solving. For instance, repetitive tasks like writing unit tests or setting up initial component structures were automated, saving valuable time.
• Improved Code Quality: Copilot’s suggestions adhered to best practices, fostering consistency across Shopify’s codebase. Engineers found that the tool often proposed cleaner, more maintainable solutions, reducing technical debt over time.
• Reduced Boilerplate Fatigue: By automating mundane coding tasks, Copilot alleviated the monotony that often drains developer morale. This shift allowed Shopify’s engineers to concentrate on the creative and strategic aspects of their work.
• Enhanced Developer Happiness: Surveys conducted by Shopify mirrored GitHub’s findings that 60-75% of Copilot users felt more fulfilled and less frustrated. Engineers appreciated the tool’s ability to keep them “in the flow,” preserving mental energy for complex challenges.
• Support for Skill Development: Less experienced developers benefited disproportionately, using Copilot as a learning aid to bridge knowledge gaps. This aligned with Shopify’s goal of empowering its team to grow and adapt in a rapidly changing tech landscape.

Challenges and Considerations

Shopify’s adoption of Copilot was not without hurdles. Early on, some engineers encountered inaccurate or suboptimal suggestions, particularly for complex logic or edge cases not well-represented in Copilot’s training data. This necessitated a culture of rigorous code review to ensure quality and security—a practice Shopify already had in place but reinforced with Copilot’s integration.

Security was another concern. While GitHub implemented vulnerability filters to catch issues like hardcoded credentials or SQL injections, Shopify’s team remained vigilant, manually reviewing AI-generated code to align with its high security standards. Additionally, Copilot’s reliance on closed-model AI (initially OpenAI’s Codex, later GPT-4) raised questions about transparency, though Shopify mitigated this by focusing on practical outcomes rather than model internals.

Cultural Transformation

The true success of Copilot at Shopify lay in its cultural impact. By framing the tool as an enabler of happiness rather than a productivity quota enforcer, Shopify fostered an environment where engineers felt trusted to experiment and innovate. Regular “定点観測” (teiten kansoku, or fixed-point observation) sessions—held mid-year and year-end—allowed the team to assess Copilot’s value through developer sentiment, revealing consistent improvements in satisfaction over time.

This approach contrasted with traditional metrics-driven evaluations, resonating with Shopify’s belief that happy developers produce better software. As Thawar noted in his GitHub Universe 2023 talk, “The most important thing is whether developers feel happy using the tool.” This philosophy not only drove Copilot’s adoption but also reinforced Shopify’s reputation as a developer-centric organization.

Key Takeaways for Organizations

Shopify’s experience with GitHub Copilot offers actionable insights for other companies:

• Prioritize Developer Experience: Focus on how AI tools enhance satisfaction and creativity, not just output. Qualitative feedback can be as valuable as quantitative data.
• Start Small, Scale Thoughtfully: Begin with a pilot group to refine workflows before rolling out broadly, ensuring alignment with organizational needs.
• Balance Automation with Oversight: Leverage AI to accelerate development, but maintain robust review processes to catch errors or security risks.
• Invest in Learning: Use AI tools to upskill junior developers, reducing barriers to entry and fostering growth.
• Embrace Cultural Shifts: Position AI as a partner, not a replacement, to build trust and enthusiasm among engineering teams.

Conclusion

Shopify’s integration of GitHub Copilot exemplifies how AI can transcend mere efficiency gains to become a catalyst for cultural transformation. By embedding Copilot into its engineering ethos, Shopify empowered its developers to work smarter, feel happier, and innovate at scale. As of March 15, 2025, with over a million lines of code written using Copilot, Shopify stands as a beacon for organizations aiming to harness AI’s potential in software development. The future of coding is undeniably intertwined with AI, and Shopify’s journey proves that when wielded thoughtfully, it can unlock unprecedented levels of empowerment and success.