4S Saigon Ecom Coffee Chat · First session · Workshop format
First 4S Saigon Ecom Coffee Chat — Vibe Coding with Claude Code for Shopify
The inaugural 4S Saigon Ecom Coffee Chat, in workshop format. Build AI tools for your Shopify store with Claude Code in one Saturday afternoon. 20 spots, free.
Updated:
When
Saturday, 23 May 2026 · 14:00–17:00 sharp. Doors close at 14:05 — small room, we start on time.
Where
Office A207 (2nd floor) · The Signature — Midtown M7. Shophouse Midtown M7 Signature, Street No. 15, Phú Mỹ Hưng, District 7, Saigon. Take the stairs next to Hochi Coffee Midtown.
How many
20 spots, first-come first-served. Free — pay for your own coffee. Bring your laptop, charged.
What this is
This is the first 4S Saigon Ecom Coffee Chat. After three months in 2025 going to coffee chats in Beijing and Shanghai, I came home wanting Saigon to have the same kind of afternoon — twenty builders around a small table, three honest hours, nobody selling.
For this first one, the shape is a workshop instead of the open peer format described on the Coffee Chat page. The room hasn’t had its own personality yet, so I’m holding the spine with one host topic. After this, sessions will move to open agenda as the room takes its own shape.
The topic this time is Vibe Coding with Claude Code for Shopify. By the time you walk out of the café, you’ll have three working tools you built (or watched me build) for your own store — plus one insight from the 2,620 advertorials I’ve analyzed that isn’t public yet.
Who this is for
Two tracks, same room, no separation:
Beginners and operators — if you’re new to Shopify or running a store, you’ll see what AI can already do for it today. No prior coding required. You leave with three tools you can run tomorrow.
Builders, agency owners, devs — if you’ve already used Claude Code, written your own scrapers, shipped internal tools, you’ll see how a CRO rubric calibrated from real A/B data + 165K merchants of behavior plugs into a Claude Code workflow. Plus the data drop and frontier-corner conversation in the last 30 minutes.
What you’ll build
Three tools, each shown live and then iterated based on the room’s suggestions — never a five-minute wait while Claude generates from zero.
- CRO Audit Tool — paste a Shopify product URL, get a 10-point scorecard + top three fixes with estimated CVR uplift. The code is the easy part; the rubric is the part you can’t build alone, calibrated from 2,620 advertorials.
- Batch Competitor Auditor — feed ten competitor URLs, watch a Google Sheet fill in live with scores per dimension + pattern insights across the category. The “one tool wrapped in a loop” trick that turns audits into a weekly habit.
- Shopify Theme Custom Block — Claude Code adds a working social-proof bar to a real Shopify dev store in about 60 seconds. Then we iterate three times based on what the room wants: change color, add icon, swap copy. For non-devs this is the moment that flips something in your head.
How we run the demos
Live AI code generation is slow. People check their phones. So we don’t run it that way.
- Pre-built first, iterate live. I bring all three tools already working. In the room we modify them in 30–60-second bites, never the long build-from-zero wait.
- Plain-English translation strip. Every step Claude Code takes gets one sentence in plain language. You don’t need to read code to follow what’s happening.
- The reward is never the terminal. It’s a PDF audit you can take home. A Google Sheet auto-filling with brand scores. A Shopify store reloading with a new block. Code is the engine; the artifact is what you’ll remember.
- You’re not watching, you’re voting. Every demo, the room proposes the next change. Claude Code ships it live. You leave knowing how to direct the tool, not just use it.
Schedule
| Time | What happens |
|---|---|
| 14:00–14:15 | Welcome · why workshop format for the first session |
| 14:15–14:35 | Round-robin: 90 seconds each — who you are, what hurts in your store right now |
| 14:35–15:20 | Three live demos (show + iterate format) |
| 15:20–15:30 | Coffee break · stretch |
| 15:30–15:45 | Data Drop — one finding from 2,620 advertorials, not yet public |
| 15:45–16:30 | Live audit of three volunteer stores from the room — full scorecard + top fixes |
| 16:30–17:00 | Two-track close: a setup corner for beginners + a frontier corner for builders |
How to introduce yourself in 90 seconds
The first twenty minutes of every Coffee Chat is a round-robin. Ninety seconds each. The goal isn’t to impress anyone — it’s so the room knows who’s here and what we’re each working on. The format is two-way on purpose: every person says what they can offer the room and what they’d like to take from it. By the time the round-robin ends, you’ll know who to grab during the break for the topic you actually care about.
A simple shape that works:
- Who you are — name, what you do. One sentence.
- What you’re doing with Shopify — what you sell, what stage you’re at, your store URL if you have one.
- What you can share — one experience, skill, dataset, or perspective you can offer the room tonight. Even “I just spent six months failing at X” is worth sharing — that’s expensive knowledge.
- What you’d like to gain — one specific thing you want to walk away with: a framework, a contact, an answer to a question you’re stuck on, an opinion from someone who’s done it.
Three real-shaped examples
Operator — “I’m Linh, running a skincare store for six months. Peak month was $8K. I can share what’s worked for me on Instagram organic acquisition, and what’s burned cash. I’d like to gain a way to audit my landing page with AI, because I’m stuck under 1% conversion.”
Builder — “I’m Hùng, freelance Shopify dev for three years, built a handful of themes for clients. I can share how I price agency work and the GitHub-Actions setup I use to deploy themes. I’d like to gain a clear answer on whether Claude Code can replace 60% of my theme work.”
Beginner — “I’m Mai. First store isn’t open yet, still researching products. I can share what it’s like watching every YouTube ecom tutorial and feeling more confused than before — if anyone’s been there. I’d like to gain a sense of what AI can do for someone at zero, and where to actually start.”
One small tip
If you’ve already shared a few lines in the WhatsApp group before the session, we’ll have read it. You don’t have to repeat the basics — go straight to “what I can share” and “what I’d like to gain”.
What you take home
- A PDF audit of your own store, scored on the 10-point rubric.
- A GitHub link with all three working tools — clone, configure, ship.
- The exact prompt template that runs the audit, with comments on why each line is the way it is.
- One non-public finding from the 2,620-advertorial dataset.
- Twenty other people in Saigon who are also building this. The room is the take-home, too.
Why workshop format for the first one
The regular Coffee Chat is a peer room — no host topic, agenda set by whoever shows up. That format works best once the room knows itself.
For the first afternoon, I want to hold a thicker spine: one host, one workflow, one take-home. Twenty people who’ve never sat down together, three hours, something concrete in everyone’s hands at the end. After this, future sessions can relax into open agenda.
If this one lands well, more workshop-shaped afternoons may also follow on bigger topics — Claude Vision for product photography, multi-agent setups for store ops, the advertorial production pipeline running inside GemCommerce. Show up for this one and you’ll be on the list for whatever comes next.
Reserve your spot
4S Saigon Ecom Coffee Chat — 20 spots, free
Saturday, 23 May 2026 · 14:00–17:00 · A207 The Signature, Midtown M7, Phú Mỹ Hưng, District 7, Saigon. Tell me who you are and how to reach you — I confirm within 24 hours and send building access notes. WhatsApp is the fastest channel after you register.
20 spots · Saigon · free · bring your laptop · pay your coffee
See you in Saigon.