The TWIMCO notebook
Field notes.
Useful observations from inside the work.
For people building a better way.
385 notes
Shopify asked every app developer to act this week. Here's what to ask yours
On October 20, Shopify asked every app developer to tighten security this week. If someone built an app for your store, or you lean on a small app for orders or customers, it's fair to ask what they did. Here's a short, friendly email you can send.
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Amazon's business-hour delivery rule: what to fix before October 30
If Amazon told you your Business Hour Delivery Rate was under 90% on September 30, you have until October 30 to get it up, or lose your seller-fulfilled offers to business buyers. Six days isn't long, so start with the packages that missed.
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Replit Monitoring Agent review: a good on-call helper, if you keep the publish switch for yourself
Replit's new Monitoring Agent can spot a production error, work out the cause, write a fix and, if you let it, publish that fix while you sleep. Two of those switches are worth turning on today. The third deserves a harder look.
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Shopify Flow can now buy shipping labels by itself. Sort your orders before you switch it on
Buying labels one order at a time is the dullest part of a busy shipping day, and Shopify Flow can now do it for you. The catch is that a label bought for the wrong order costs money and time to undo. Before you build the workflow, sort your orders into three piles.
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Who actually holds your domain? Six questions to answer before you change agencies
Ask most owners who controls their domain and you get a shrug. Many find out who controls their domain on the worst possible day: the site is down, email has stopped, and the login belongs to a developer who left three years ago. Six plain questions will tell you where you stand, and most of them take ten minutes to answer.
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Shopify stock counts now wait for a review. Set up who counts and who approves before November
Most small stores count stock on a clipboard or a spreadsheet, then someone types the numbers back in and hopes. Shopify's October update adds a step that matters more than the scanning: the count waits for a person to review the differences before stock changes. Here's how to set it up before the holidays.
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Etsy now wants one unedited photo on every listing. Pick the rule your marketplace needs
On October 22, Etsy said buyers can't tell which listings involve AI, and that it has become one of the top three things stopping them from shopping more. Its answer is a real photo of the real item on every listing. If you run a marketplace, you'll need a rule of your own soon. Here are three to choose from.
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Don't add the payroll connector to the chat that reads your email
Payroll, banking and accounting tools are arriving in Claude and ChatGPT, and the natural move is to switch them on in the assistant you already use. That's the mistake. Gusto said so itself this week, in plain words, and the reason applies to every sensitive connector.
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Your app asks for every contact so people can invite one friend. Google Play wants that changed by January 27
Plenty of apps ask for access to a person's whole address book just so they can invite a friend or share a link. Google Play's new contacts policy becomes mandatory on January 27, 2027 for apps targeting Android 17. Here's what to change, and when.
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Gusto AI connectors review: payroll prep in Claude or ChatGPT, with your sign-off on every change
Gusto now lets you ask Claude, ChatGPT or Slack about your payroll, and have an assistant prepare the next run for you to approve. The safeguards are better than most. Gusto's own setup advice, though, asks you to use it in a way most people don't use their assistants.
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The county's new AI assistant found a wrong phone number in an old press release. Ask your vendor these four questions
Two Kansas City-area counties have put AI assistants on their websites. One detail from Jackson County's rollout is worth more than any demo: testing turned up an outdated phone number the assistant had picked up from an old press release. If your agency is shopping for one, start there.
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Shopify now taxes US return shipping fees. Make sure nobody else is still adding it
Starting October 23, Shopify Tax charges tax on the return shipping fees you take out of US refunds. If your bookkeeper, returns app or a spreadsheet was already handling that tax by hand, you may now be collecting it twice. Here's what to look at this week.
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1Password for Agents review: your agent can sign in, and the password stays in the vault
Your assistant hits a login page and stops. Until this week the choices were to take over and type it yourself, or paste the password into a chat. 1Password launched a third option on October 22. It fixes the password problem. It doesn't decide what the agent does once it's inside.
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Our automations all run on one person's login. What should we buy?
It's a question we hear more often than you'd think. The office manager built forty Zaps on her own account over four years, she leaves in December, and nobody else can open them. The answer starts with which plan you're on, not with a new tool.
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Your app's privacy label was right the day you wrote it
Somebody answered Apple's privacy questions when the app launched. Since then it has picked up an analytics tool, a chat widget and a new crash reporter. Whether the label on your store page still tells the truth is easy to check and easy to forget.
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Framer MCP review: let the agent edit on a branch, keep the publish button
Framer's new MCP server lets ChatGPT, Claude or Cursor edit your canvas, update the CMS and even publish. It's worth turning on, as long as the agent works on a branch and a person keeps the publish button.
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The test account was created in 2012. The attack came in 2024.
In Wales, an account called Test2 sat on a public-sector network for more than twelve years with the password Password1. The UK regulator's write-up this week reads like a post-mortem most organisations could write about themselves.
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Your holiday offer may show up in Google's AI Mode. Put it through a cart first.
Google has started showing deals like 'Buy 4, get $20 off' inside Shopping ads in AI Mode, and its ads can now lift offers off your website by themselves. Either way, the shopper arrives expecting that price. Spend half an hour making sure your checkout agrees.
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Half your customers don't use chatbots. Keep a door that isn't one.
A customer opens your help page, sees only a chat bubble, and closes the tab. Pew found about half of US adults never use AI chatbots, and most of them aren't planning to start. If the bot is the only way to reach you, that customer has just left.
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Perfume can't fly. Does your checkout know that?
Every December someone buys a gift set with a bottle of perfume in it, picks two-day shipping, and the label prints for air. USPS won't carry alcohol-based perfume by air without special permission. That rule belongs in your catalog, not in one packer's memory.
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Tell us where you want to go. We’ll find the first thing worth changing.
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