Shopify’s app ecosystem is powerful — and fragile. A new upsell widget, loyalty script, or “harmless” pixel can break Add to cart, block a payment method presentation, or freeze a step on mobile only. The rest of the site looks healthy.

What breaks in practice

• Theme app embeds that fight for the cart drawer
• Checkout UI extensions that error in one market’s currency
• Third-party scripts that only fail on slower mobile networks
• Updates that ship mid-week with no post-install checkout test

Friction Observatory does not replace your app review process. It gives you a buyer-path smoke test on a schedule and after deploys, with evidence you can send to the app vendor the same hour.