> This page is for Developer.

> For clean Markdown of any page, append .md to the page URL.
> For a complete documentation index, see https://docs.bigcommerce.com/llms.txt.
> For AI client integration (Claude Code, Cursor, etc.), connect to the MCP server at https://docs.bigcommerce.com/_mcp/server.

# BigCommerce Developer Tools

Plan: Stencil Developer

Lesson 30 of 31 · 15 min

The merchant store wants to drive the shopper's experience. Merchants need to go to market quickly and constantly innovating and customizing the Stencil theme gives them the opportunity to do that.

Part of being a great developer is ensuring the customized pages you are developing are acceptable and deliver a great experience to the merchant and their shoppers.

Before developing or editing a theme, it's important for you to be aware of the [developer tools](/developer/docs/overview/tools-and-sdks) that help to customize the Stencil Theme.

Familiarity with these tools is a prerequisite to success and will save you time and difficulty when customizing the Stencil theme and workflow.

> **Info**
>
> **TIP:** Start with a clean theme.  Changes can be pulled from BigCommerce's GitHub fork.

**fork:** In software engineering, a project fork happens when developers take a copy of source code from one software package and start independent development on it, creating a distinct and separate piece of software.

## Resources

* [Dev Tools and Resources](/developer/docs/overview/tools-and-sdks)
* [Introduction to Building Apps](/developer/docs/integrations/apps/introduction)