Team,
团队，
We are entering a time where more merchants and entrepreneurs could be created than any other in history. We often talk about bringing down the complexity curve to allow more people to choose this as a career. Each step along the entrepreneurial path is rife with decisions requiring skill, judgement and knowledge. Having AI alongside the journey and increasingly doing not just the consultation, but also doing the work for our merchants is a mindblowing step function change here.
我们正步入一个历史上将诞生前所未有数量的商家和企业家的时代。我们常谈通过降低复杂度曲线，使更多人能将此作为职业选择。创业道路上的每一步都充斥着需要技巧、判断和知识的决策。在这一过程中，有 AI 陪伴，不仅提供咨询，更逐步为我们的商家实际执行工作，这是一种颠覆性的飞跃变化。
Our task here at Shopify is to make our software unquestionably the best canvas on which to develop the best businesses of the future. We do this by keeping everyone cutting edge and bringing all the best tools to bear so our merchants can be more successful than they themselves used to imagine. For that we need to be absolutely ahead.
在 Shopify，我们的任务是让我们的软件毫无疑问成为开发未来最佳商业模式的最佳画布。我们通过确保每个人都站在前沿，并整合所有顶尖工具，帮助我们的商家取得比他们曾经想象更大的成功。为此，我们必须绝对领先。
Reflexive AI usage is now a baseline expectation at Shopify
也许你已经身处这一前沿，并对这份备忘录感到疑惑。
In that case you already use AI as a thought partner, deep researcher, critic, tutor, or pair programmer. I use it all the time, but even I feel I'm only scratching the surface. It’s the most rapid shift to how work is done that I’ve seen in my career and I’ve been pretty clear about my enthusiasm for it: you've heard me talk about AI in weekly videos, podcasts, town halls, and… Summit! Last summer I used agents to create my talk, and presented about that. I did this as a call to action and invitation for everyone to tinker with AI, to dispel any scepticism or confusion that this matters at all levels. Many of you took up the call, and all of us who did have been in absolute awe of the new capabilities and tools that AI can deliver to augment our skills, crafts, and fill in our gaps.
在 Shopify，如今普遍预期每个人都能自如运用 AI。也许你已然身处这一前沿，并将此备忘录视为理所当然。如果是这样，那你已经将 AI 用作思维伙伴、深度研究者、批评者、导师或结对编程的搭档。我自己常常使用 AI，但即使是我，也觉得自己只是触及了冰山一角。这是我职业生涯中见过的工作方式转变中最迅速的一次，我对它充满热情，这一点我在每周视频、播客、市政厅会议甚至峰会中都曾提及。去年夏天，我利用代理生成了演讲稿，并就此进行了演讲。这既是一种号召行动，也是在邀请每个人动手试验 AI，以消除对其各层面重要性的任何怀疑或困惑。你们中的许多人都响应了这一号召，我们所有参与的人都对 AI 能提升我们的技能、工艺并弥补短板的新能力和新工具感到由衷惊叹。
What we have learned so far is that using AI well is a skill that needs to be carefully learned by… using it a lot. It’s just too unlike everything else. The call to tinker with it was the right one, but it was too much of a suggestion. This is what I want to change here today. We also learned that, as opposed to most tools, AI acts as a multiplier. We are all lucky to work with some amazing colleagues, the kind who contribute 10X of what was previously thought possible. It’s my favorite thing about this company. And what’s even more amazing is that, for the first time, we see the tools become 10X themselves. I’ve seen many of these people approach implausible tasks, ones we wouldn’t even have chosen to tackle before, with reflexive and brilliant usage of AI to get 100X the work done.
目前我们了解到，善于使用 AI 是一项技能，这需要通过大量使用来认真学习。它实在与其他工具截然不同。号召大家动手尝试固然正确，但那仅仅是个建议，这一点需要改变。我们还发现，与大多数工具不同，AI 具有倍增效应。我们都很幸运能与那些令人惊叹的同事共事，他们的贡献远超以往预期的 10 倍。这也是我最喜欢这家公司的地方。而更令人惊叹的是，我们首次看到工具本身也能提升 10 倍。我见过许多人以自然而又卓越的方式使用 AI 来应对之前连我们都不敢尝试的几乎不可能完成的任务，从而实现 100 倍的工作效率。
In my On Leadership memo years ago, I described Shopify as a red queen race based on the Alice in Wonderland story—you have to keep running just to stay still. In a company growing 20-40% year over year, you must improve by at least that every year just to re-qualify. This goes for me as well as everyone else.
在多年前的《论领导力》备忘录中，我将 Shopify 比作《爱丽丝梦游仙境》中红心皇后的赛跑——你必须不断奔跑，才能保持原地不动。在一家每年增长 20%-40% 的公司中，每年你至少需要达到同样的提升，才能保持竞争力。这对我和每个人都同样适用。
This sounds daunting, but given the nature of the tools, this doesn’t even sound terribly ambitious to me anymore. It’s also exactly the kind of environment that our top performers tell us they want. Learning together, surrounded by people who also are on their own journey of personal growth and working on worthwhile, meaningful, and hard problems is precisely the environment Shopify was created to provide. This represents both an opportunity and a requirement, deeply connected to our core values of Be a Constant Learner and Thrive on Change. These aren't just aspirational phrases—they're fundamental expectations that come with being a part of this world-class team. This is what we founders wanted, and this is what we built.
这听起来令人望而生畏，但鉴于这些工具的特性，对我来说这已不再显得过于雄心勃勃。这正是我们顶尖人才所期望的工作环境。大家一起学习，身边充满了也在追求个人成长、致力于解决有意义、具挑战性问题的人，这恰恰是 Shopify 创立的初衷。这既是一种机遇，也是必然要求，与我们“不断学习”和“在变革中茁壮成长”的核心价值观紧密相连。这不仅仅是理想化的口号，而是成为这一世界级团队一员的基本预期。这正是我们创始人所渴望，并为之建设的。
What This Means
这意味着什么
1.Using AI effectively is now a fundamental expectation of everyone at Shopify. It's a tool of all trades today, and will only grow in importance. Frankly, I don't think it's feasible to opt out of learning the skill of applying AI in your craft; you are welcome to try, but I want to be honest I cannot see this working out today, and definitely not tomorrow. Stagnation is almost certain, and stagnation is slow-motion failure. If you're not climbing, you're sliding.
在 Shopify，有效使用 AI 已成为每个人的基本预期。如今，它已经成为万金油般的工具，其重要性只会不断增加。坦率地说，我认为放弃学习如何在专业技能中应用 AI 是不可行的；你可以尝试，但老实说，我看不到这种选择在今天或明天能成功。停滞几乎是必然，而停滞就是缓慢失败。如果你不在攀登，那就会下滑。
2.AI must be part of your GSD Prototype phase. The prototype phase of any GSD project should be dominated by AI exploration. Prototypes are meant for learning and creating information. AI dramatically accelerates this process. You can learn to produce something that other team mates can look at, use, and reason about in a fraction of the time it used to take.
在你的 GSD 原型阶段，AI 必须成为其中的一部分。任何 GSD 项目的原型阶段都应以 AI 探索为主。原型的目的是学习和信息创造，而 AI 能极大加速这一过程。你可以在短时间内学习制作出供其他团队成员审视、使用和推理的成果，而过去需要花费更长时间。
3.We will add AI usage questions to our performance and peer review questionnaire. Learning to use AI well is an unobvious skill. My sense is that a lot of people give up after writing a prompt and not getting the ideal thing back immediately. Learning to prompt and load context is important, and getting peers to provide feedback on how this is going will be valuable.
我们将把 AI 使用情况作为问题加入到绩效和同伴评审问卷中。学会高效使用 AI 是一项不易察觉的技能。我感觉很多人在写出提示后，因未能立刻获得理想效果而选择放弃。学会如何设定提示和加载上下文非常重要，同时获得同伴反馈也将极具价值。
4.Learning is self directed, but share what you learned. You have access to as much of the cutting edge AI tools as possible. There is chat.shopify.io, which we had for years now. Developers have proxy, Copilot, Cursor, Claude code, all pre-tooled and ready to go. We’ll learn and adapt together as a team. We’ll be sharing Ws (and Ls!) with each other as we experiment with new AI capabilities, and we’ll dedicate time to AI integration in our monthly business reviews and product development cycles. Slack and Vault have lots of places where people share prompts that they developed, like #revenue-ai-use-cases and #ai-centaurs.
学习是自我导向的，但要分享所学。你可以接触到尽可能多的前沿 AI 工具。比如我们多年来一直使用的 chat.shopify.io，以及开发者们使用的 Proxy、Copilot、Cursor、Claude code 等预设工具，都已经随时可用。我们将作为一个团队共同学习和适应新变化。在试验新 AI 功能的过程中，我们会相互分享成功（和失败）的经验，并在每月的业务回顾和产品开发周期中专门安排时间进行 AI 集成。Slack 和 Vault 上也有许多分享自创提示的渠道，比如 #revenue-ai-use-cases 和 #ai-centaurs。
5.Before asking for more Headcount and resources, teams must demonstrate why they cannot get what they want done using AI. What would this area look like if autonomous AI agents were already part of the team? This question can lead to really fun discussions and projects. Everyone means everyone. This applies to all of us—including me and the executive team.
在申请更多人手和资源之前，各团队必须证明为何利用 AI 就无法完成既定目标。如果这个领域已经配备了自主 AI 代理，情况会是怎样？这一问题将引发极具趣味的讨论和项目。这里的“每个人”确实指所有人——包括我和执行团队在内。
The Path Forward
前进之路
AI will totally change Shopify, our work, and the rest of our lives. We're all in on this! I couldn't think of a better place to be part of this truly unprecedented change than being here. You don't just get a front-row seat, but are surrounded by a whole company learning and pushing things forward together.
AI 将彻底改变 Shopify、我们的工作以及我们生活的方方面面。我们全力投入其中！我无法想到比这里更适合参与这场前所未有变革的地方。你不仅能享受第一排的视角，还将身处一个全公司共同学习、共同推动进步的环境中。
Our job is to figure out what entrepreneurship looks like in a world where AI is universally available. And I intend for us to do the best possible job of that, and to do that I need everyone’s help. I already laid out a lot of the AI projects in the themes this year—our roadmap is clear, and our product will better match our mission. What we need to succeed is our collective sum total skill and ambition at applying our craft, multiplied by AI, for the benefit of our merchants.
我们的任务是弄清楚，在一个 AI 无处不在的世界中，企业家精神应当是什么样子。我希望我们能做得尽善尽美，而为此我需要每个人的帮助。今年我已经在各个主题中规划了许多 AI 项目——我们的路线图已经清晰，我们的产品将更好地契合我们的使命。我们成功所需要的是大家运用自身技艺的综合技能和雄心，再借助 AI 的倍增效应，为我们的商家创造更大价值。