Part of it clearly does, part of it is contested, and the filing deadline applies either way. This is not legal advice, and the ambiguity is the point worth understanding before December.

The moment finance stops trusting the dashboard and starts rebuilding it in a spreadsheet, you have already paid for a reporting layer. The question is only whether you also own it.

Shopify stopped letting merchants create custom apps from the admin on January 1, 2026. That one change moved app development from a settings screen into a development workflow, and it changed what you should be paying an agency for.