Shopify Incident Runbook

Overview

Rapid incident response for Shopify API outages, authentication failures, and rate limit emergencies. Distinguish between Shopify-side issues and your app's integration issues.

Prerequisites

• Access to Shopify admin and status page
• Application logs and metrics
• Communication channels (Slack, PagerDuty)

Instructions

Step 1: Quick Triage (First 5 Minutes)

Run the triage script to check Shopify status, API connectivity, REST rate limits, and GraphQL throttle state in one pass.

See Triage Script for the complete diagnostic script.

Step 2: Decision Tree

Is Shopifystatus.com showing an incident?
├── YES → Shopify-side outage
│   ├── Enable graceful degradation / cached responses
│   ├── Notify stakeholders: "Shopify is experiencing issues"
│   └── Monitor status page for resolution
│
└── NO → Likely your integration
    ├── HTTP 401? → Token expired or revoked
    │   └── Check: Was app reinstalled? Rotate token.
    ├── HTTP 403? → Scope missing
    │   └── Check: Were scopes changed? Re-run OAuth.
    ├── HTTP 429 / THROTTLED? → Rate limit exceeded
    │   └── Check: Runaway loop? Reduce query frequency.
    ├── HTTP 5xx? → Intermittent Shopify issue
    │   └── Retry with backoff, monitor for pattern.
    └── Network timeout? → Infrastructure issue
        └── Check: DNS, firewall, TLS certificates.

Step 3: Immediate Actions by Error Type

Diagnostic commands and remediation for 401 (token expired), 429 (rate limited), and 5xx (Shopify internal errors). Always capture X-Request-Id headers for Shopify support.

See Error Type Actions for complete commands per error type.

Step 4: Communication Templates

Internal (Slack):

INCIDENT: Shopify Integration Issue
Severity: P[1/2/3]
Status: INVESTIGATING
Impact: [What users/merchants are affected]
Root cause: [Shopify outage / Our auth issue / Rate limiting]
Action: [What we're doing now]
Next update: [Time]
Responder: @[name]

External (Merchant-facing):

We're currently experiencing issues with some Shopify-connected features.
[Order sync / Product updates / etc.] may be delayed.
We're actively working on resolution and will update shortly.
All data is safe — no orders or products have been lost.

Output

• Triage completed within 5 minutes
• Root cause identified (Shopify vs. integration)
• Immediate mitigation applied
• Stakeholders notified

Error Handling

Examples

One-Liner Health Check

curl -sf -H "X-Shopify-Access-Token: $SHOPIFY_ACCESS_TOKEN" \
  "https://$SHOPIFY_STORE/admin/api/${SHOPIFY_API_VERSION:-2025-04}/shop.json" \
  | jq '{name: .shop.name, plan: .shop.plan_name}' \
  && echo "SHOPIFY: HEALTHY" || echo "SHOPIFY: UNREACHABLE"

Post-Incident Checklist

• Timeline documented with UTC timestamps
• Root cause identified
• X-Request-Id values collected (for Shopify support)
• Customer impact assessed
• Prevention action items created
• Monitoring/alerting gaps identified

Resources

• Shopify Status Page
• Shopify Partner Support
• Shopify Community Forums