I built an AI Shopify audit tool, then decided to take it back into my own hands

Vena — Thu, 20 Aug 2026 16:08:25 +0000

Most Shopify audit tools give you a polite report.

Vetta roasts your store instead and tells you exactly how to fix what's broken.

A few weeks ago, I built Vetta an AI-powered tool that audits Shopify stores for conversion issues.

Instead of a standard “here are some insights” report, it bluntly calls out where your store is bleeding money, then gives you actual solutions to fix it.

I built the first version in a single session using Emergent.sh.

The core functionality was there, the app was running, and I could get surprisingly far without building everything from scratch.

But there was one problem:

The interface worked, but I wasn't completely happy with where it was. I wanted more control over the design and the ability to iterate without constantly spending tokens.

So instead of continuing to spend tokens on changes I knew I could eventually handle myself, I decided to take a different route.

I deployed the code to Git and started working on it directly.

That shift has been interesting.

Emergent helped me get from idea → working product quickly.

Git and my own development workflow give me more control over what happens next which matters a lot for a project where the tone and design carry as much weight as the logic behind it.

I'm still learning the codebase and figuring things out as I go, but that's kind of the point of this project.

I'm not trying to build the perfect app on the first attempt.

I'm trying to understand what I can build, where AI can accelerate the process, and where I still need to get my hands dirty.

Vetta started as an AI-built project. Now I'm turning it into a project I actually understand.

DEV Community: Vena

I built an AI Shopify audit tool, then decided to take it back into my own hands