#8386·cli

shopify app deploy blocked by phantom [events]: Required — Partner Dashboard shows no Events feature enabled

Author: diyeshCreated Aug 24, 2026Updated Aug 24, 2026

CLI version: reproduced identically on 4.7.0, 4.6.1, 4.0.0, and 3.94.3

Problem

shopify app deploy (and shopify app config validate) fails with:

[events]: Required

even though shopify.app.toml has no [events] section and never has. I checked the Partner Dashboard for this app — there's no mention of "Events" / "Next-Gen Events" anywhere, no toggle, nothing to enable or configure.

Steps to reproduce

  1. Have an existing app with a shopify.app.toml that has never used [events] (just a plain [webhooks] section with api_version set, no subscriptions).
  2. Run shopify app config validate (or shopify app deploy).
  3. Observe:
    ╭─ error ──────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────╮
    │                                                                              │
    │  Validation errors found.                                                    │
    │                                                                              │
    │  • [events]: Required                                                        │
    │                                                                              │
    ╰──────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────╯

What I tried

  1. Confirmed it's not a local-CLI-version issue — reproduced the identical error on @shopify/cli 4.7.0, 4.6.1, 4.0.0, and 3.94.3 (full major-version spread) via npx @shopify/cli@<version> app config validate. Since the required-field set differs across those releases, this points to the check coming from the Partners backend, not code bundled in the CLI.
  2. Added a minimal [events] block to shopify.app.toml:
    toml
    [events]
    api_version = "2026-07"
    This flips to two contradictory errors:
    [events.subscription]: Required
    Unsupported section(s) in app configuration: events
    So the backend simultaneously demands the section and rejects it as unsupported for this app — no toml content can satisfy both at once.

Expected behavior

shopify app deploy should succeed without requiring a section for a feature that isn't enabled for the app/org, or the error message should point at what actually needs enabling instead of a self-contradictory pair of validation errors.

Context

  • App has an existing, working [webhooks] section (api_version set, no subscriptions configured yet).
  • Partner Dashboard shows no "Events" (developer preview) toggle or notice for this app.