Quick: An internal hosting platform for the AI era

Summary

Shopify built Quick to make internally created prototypes, dashboards, tools, and games easier to share than deploy, giving employees a secure URL for a folder of HTML and assets. Launched internally in July 2025, it places sites behind Identity-Aware Proxy, serves bucket content through NGINX and gcsfuse, and deploys with a wrapper around gcloud rsync. A service in front of CloudSQL provides database and realtime APIs, while server-held credentials support calls to Shopify’s AI proxy; file uploads, BigQuery access, WebSockets, and employee identity are also available. Quick now hosts more than 50,000 sites, has been used by over half of Shopify employees, and runs on one $200-per-month VM, with constraints, rate limiting, and a migration from Node to Go supporting its operation.

Context

Shopify employees were already building prototypes, dashboards, and small tools, but getting those creations in front of other people was harder than building them. AI later made it possible for people across disciplines to generate working websites, increasing demand for a simple, secure place to host them.

Approach / What changed

Quick accepts a folder of HTML and assets, uploads it to Google Cloud Storage, and serves it through NGINX with gcsfuse behind Identity-Aware Proxy. Its client-side APIs add CloudSQL-backed data and realtime features, AI through Shopify’s proxy, file uploads, BigQuery access, WebSockets, and employee identity. The platform deliberately keeps sites open to all employees and limits its capability set.

Takeaways

• Quick sites are internal-only through Identity-Aware Proxy, allowing client-side APIs to work without exposing service credentials or requiring site authors to manage API keys.
• The platform combines static asset hosting with shared backend capabilities including database operations, realtime subscriptions, AI calls, file uploads, BigQuery access, WebSockets, and employee identity.
• More than 50,000 sites have been created by over half of Shopify employees, while the platform runs on a single VM costing $200 per month; rate limiting addresses abusive batch jobs and large data usage.

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