---
title: "Developers | Inner Circle: Members Only"
description: "Build a Shopify theme or a server integration against Inner Circle: the theme contract for markup only members see, and the read-only API for who is unlocked."
source: https://innercircle.monochrome.digital/developers/
---

[Home](https://innercircle.monochrome.digital/) Developers

# Developers

Two published contracts, both at version 1. Everything on them keeps its meaning until the version goes up. Anything about Inner Circle that is not on them is internal and changes without notice.

Every plan

## [Inner Circle for theme developers](https://innercircle.monochrome.digital/developers/theme/)

Show different markup to a member, a guest or a locked-out visitor, with no flash of the wrong version and no JavaScript to write. On every plan, including Free.

Updated 20 August 2026

Growth

## [The Inner Circle API](https://innercircle.monochrome.digital/developers/api/)

Read a shop's access state from your own server, ERP or middleware: who is unlocked, who has been let in, and who has asked. Read-only, one shop per credential.

Updated 20 August 2026

## Which one you want

If you are building a **theme** and want a section, a banner or a menu item to appear only for a member, you want the theme contract, and you do not need the merchant to be on a paid plan.

If you are building a **server** — an ERP, a middleware, an agency integration — and need to ask Inner Circle who is unlocked, you want the API, and the merchant needs [Growth](https://innercircle.monochrome.digital/pricing/).

Neither is an enforcement point. What actually stops a locked product being bought is Inner Circle’s checkout validation, which runs inside Shopify and which neither of these affects. The [limits we publish](https://innercircle.monochrome.digital/features/#not-features) say where that reaches and where it does not.

Something you cannot do that you think you should be able to? [Tell us](https://innercircle.monochrome.digital/contact/). It is more likely to become a new field than a reason to open up the rules.