Refactor shopify search to query the dev-assistant vector store as JSON

[nelsonwittwer]

What

Repurposes shopify search from a (now-broken) browser launcher into an agent-facing JSON tool that queries the shopify.dev dev-assistant vector store and prints matching documentation chunks as JSON to stdout.

Why

search opened a browser at https://shopify.dev?search=<query>. That URL now 301-redirects to the docs SPA, which ignores the ?search= param — so users land on the docs home with no results. The command has effectively been broken for a long time (I think when we moved to ReactRouter 7 from Rails/React).

Monorail shows it's still invoked ~70–100×/month (and rising), so the broken experience keeps getting exposure. Curious on product's take on this -- I defaulted to repurposing this command for agents to get at context the same way we do in skills/MCP: vector store search results.

This complements fetch-doc (verbatim full-document retrieval) as the "chunked discovery" half: search finds the relevant pieces, fetch-doc pulls a whole document.

How

• Queries GET https://shopify.dev/assistant/search (public, no auth) and passes the raw JSON response body straight through to stdout — agents JSON.parse it directly.
• query is now required (no browser fallback).
• Adds two optional filters, passed through to the server:
  • --api-name (e.g. admin, storefront, hydrogen, functions) — unknown values are ignored server-side.
  • --api-version (e.g. 2025-10, latest, current).
• A non-ok response surfaces the server's {error} message (e.g. an invalid api_version lists the available versions) via AbortError; stdout stays empty and the exit code is non-zero.

Behavior change

This is a behavior change for an existing command, hence a minor bump: search no longer opens a browser, query is now required, and output is JSON on stdout -- see the why section above.

[dmerand]

❤️

[dmerand]

Should discuss this contract with @nickwesselman . I'd assume that shopify search could just have a --fetch-doc param rather than a whole separate command for that case.

[nickwesselman]

Having second thoughts about using shopify search for this.

I'm sure use of shopify search is near-zero, but should we stick to our SemVer committment, and create a new command? We could fix the existing command or just deprecate it.

This would also give us an opportunity to apply our CLI design guidelines to a new command. e.g. The shopify search use of positional arguments is against those guidelines.

[github-actions]

Differences in type declarations

We detected differences in the type declarations generated by Typescript for this branch compared to the baseline ('main' branch). Please, review them to ensure they are backward-compatible. Here are some important things to keep in mind:

• Some seemingly private modules might be re-exported through public modules.
• If the branch is behind main you might see odd diffs, rebase main into this branch.

New type declarations

We found no new type declarations in this PR

Existing type declarations

packages/cli-kit/dist/public/node/session.d.ts

@@ -47,6 +47,22 @@ export declare function isUserAccount(account: AccountInfo): account is UserAcco
  * @returns True if the account is a ServiceAccount.
  */
 export declare function isServiceAccount(account: AccountInfo): account is ServiceAccountInfo;
+/**
+ * Reports whether the CLI already has stored credentials, without prompting the
+ * user, opening a browser, or making any network request.
+ *
+ * This is a passive, side-effect-free check: it reads the local session store and
+ * returns  when at least one valid session is present. Unlike the
+ *  functions, it never triggers a login flow and never logs
+ * the user out. Because it does not contact the network, it cannot tell whether the
+ * stored token is currently valid/unexpired — only that credentials exist locally.
+ *
+ * Intended for best-effort, opportunistic behaviour (for example, enriching
+ * telemetry only for users who are already logged in).
+ *
+ * @returns True if local credentials exist, false otherwise.
+ */
+export declare function sessionExists(): Promise<boolean>;
 /**
  * Ensure that we have a valid session with no particular scopes.
  *