Theme architecture
Definition
Theme architecture is the fixed file structure a Shopify theme has to follow — layouts, templates, section groups, sections, blocks, snippets, assets, config and locales, each with a defined role and a defined place in the render order. The platform loads a theme by that structure rather than by configuration, so where a file lives determines when — and whether — it runs.
Documented at https://shopify.dev/docs/storefronts/themes/architecture.
How we've used it
Most architecture work is about finding the one file that always runs. A sub-brand repaint is a single predicate evaluated in the layout that sets a body class and two color tokens, and the header, footer and announcement bar inherit it — no forked templates, no duplicated sections. A build step sits at the other end: Shopify serves theme assets exactly as uploaded, so a Node bundler concatenates the base theme's separate core scripts into one file and minifies everything Liquid references, keeping class names unmangled because other theme code calls them by name. And because the layout is the only place that sees every request, it's where a redirect belongs when a sort option has to land on a merchandised collection instead of a catch-all.
Builds using it
2 further gated builds use it; their pages follow.
Related entities
Theme sections · Section groups · Liquid snippets · Theme settings schema · CSS custom properties