gabrielmoreira 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
| Scenario | Response Time | Escalation |
|---|---|---|
| Shopify API fully down | Monitor status page | Nothing to fix on our side |
| Auth token revoked | < 15 min | Trigger re-auth, notify merchant |
| Rate limit exhaustion | < 30 min | Reduce query frequency, optimize costs |
| Webhook delivery failures | < 1 hour | Check endpoint health, review HMAC |
| Data sync stalled | < 4 hours | Run manual sync after resolution |
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-Idvalues collected (for Shopify support) - Customer impact assessed
- Prevention action items created
- Monitoring/alerting gaps identified