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Drupal AI Summit NYC: Building AI that lasts

Written by guest blogger María Fernanda Silva

Something is shifting in how organizations think about AI. The early excitement around what it could do is giving way to a harder, more important question: how do you build AI that actually holds up — at scale, under pressure, and over time?

On 14 May 2026, New York City becomes the place where that question gets answered. The Drupal AI Summit brings together enterprise leaders, digital decision-makers, and senior practitioners from across the US and Europe — not to explore AI in theory, but to share what responsible, durable AI looks like in practice.

The decisions that define what AI becomes

Thirteen focused sessions. Real case studies. The Summit is built around the strategic and organizational questions that determine whether AI delivers real value or stays stuck in pilot mode: governance, investment, long-term architecture, and what it actually takes to scale. If you are responsible for those decisions, this is where you belong.

Open source and the architecture of trust

Most AI implementations fail quietly — locked into black boxes, disconnected from the workflows where real work happens, impossible to adjust without starting over.

There is a different path. When AI is embedded directly into content, data, and workflow systems (where enterprise work actually happens), teams maintain transparency, organisations retain control, and the architecture evolves alongside the business without the cost of replatforming. This is not a niche concern. It speaks to every enterprise leader navigating AI in environments where trust, regulation, and scale are not optional considerations — they are the entire challenge.

The Summit explores what this looks like in practice, with sessions grounded in the architectural and organizational choices that make responsible AI adoption real, not just possible.

What to expect on 14 May

From 9:00 am to 5:45 pm at 360 Madison Avenue in the heart of Midtown Manhattan, you will have access to thirteen sessions built entirely around case studies from peers who are applying AI in production environments. No theoretical frameworks. No technical deep-dives. Just honest, grounded conversations about what works, what doesn't, and what it takes to build AI your organization can trust for the long term.

Practitioners and leaders are flying in from across the US and Europe to share first-hand experience and to learn from each other. Your pass also grants access to the wider apidays New York event running across both days, connecting you with communities exploring APIs, AI agents, cybersecurity, and modern digital infrastructure — all under the same roof.

Explore the Summit

Early Bird tickets available until 13 April

Secure your place at the Drupal AI Summit NYC for $150 USD before 13 April 2026. After that, tickets are $200 USD.

The Paris edition sold out. If you're planning to join us in New York, early is the right call.

The foundations for enterprise-grade AI already exist. Come and see how they're being built — openly, responsibly, and together.

Secure your Early Bird ticket today!

Photos by Paul Johnson

File attachments:

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54974505341_252617ffea_k.jpg

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Drupal AI Initiative: Drupal AI Summit NYC: Building AI that lasts

Written by guest blogger María Fernanda Silva

Something is shifting in how organizations think about AI. The early excitement around what it could do is giving way to a harder, more important question: how do you build AI that actually holds up — at scale, under pressure, and over time?

On 14 May 2026, New York City becomes the place where that question gets answered. The Drupal AI Summit brings together enterprise leaders, digital decision-makers, and senior practitioners from across the US and Europe — not to explore AI in theory, but to share what responsible, durable AI looks like in practice.

The decisions that define what AI becomes

Thirteen focused sessions. Real case studies. The Summit is built around the strategic and organizational questions that determine whether AI delivers real value or stays stuck in pilot mode: governance, investment, long-term architecture, and what it actually takes to scale. If you are responsible for those decisions, this is where you belong.

Open source and the architecture of trust

Most AI implementations fail quietly — locked into black boxes, disconnected from the workflows where real work happens, impossible to adjust without starting over.

There is a different path. When AI is embedded directly into content, data, and workflow systems (where enterprise work actually happens), teams maintain transparency, organisations retain control, and the architecture evolves alongside the business without the cost of replatforming. This is not a niche concern. It speaks to every enterprise leader navigating AI in environments where trust, regulation, and scale are not optional considerations — they are the entire challenge.

The Summit explores what this looks like in practice, with sessions grounded in the architectural and organizational choices that make responsible AI adoption real, not just possible.

What to expect on 14 May

From 9:00 am to 5:45 pm at 360 Madison Avenue in the heart of Midtown Manhattan, you will have access to thirteen sessions built entirely around case studies from peers who are applying AI in production environments. No theoretical frameworks. No technical deep-dives. Just honest, grounded conversations about what works, what doesn't, and what it takes to build AI your organization can trust for the long term.

Practitioners and leaders are flying in from across the US and Europe to share first-hand experience and to learn from each other. Your pass also grants access to the wider apidays New York event running across both days, connecting you with communities exploring APIs, AI agents, cybersecurity, and modern digital infrastructure — all under the same roof.

Explore the Summit

Early Bird tickets available until 13 April

Secure your place at the Drupal AI Summit NYC for $150 USD before 13 April 2026. After that, tickets are $200 USD.

The Paris edition sold out. If you're planning to join us in New York, early is the right call.

The foundations for enterprise-grade AI already exist. Come and see how they're being built — openly, responsibly, and together.

Secure your Early Bird ticket today!

Photos by Paul Johnson

File attachments:

54974791880_b1bdd50c90_k.jpg

54974505341_252617ffea_k.jpg

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Dries Buytaert: Open Source infrastructure deserves a business model

Open Source software is free to download. But the infrastructure that makes it usable is not.

When developers install or update dependencies through npm, Composer, pip, or Cargo, those tools rely on package registries that host and distribute millions of software packages. When maintainers collaborate, they depend on hosted services: Git repositories, CI pipelines, and other tools to build, test, and release software.

Most of this infrastructure is invisible to end users, and almost no one thinks about what it costs to run.

But it is not free. Someone has to operate the servers, pay for bandwidth, respond to support questions, patch security issues, and keep everything reliable.

Much of the modern software ecosystem depends on these services working reliably. And yet the organizations operating them are almost always scrambling to fund them.

A patchwork of fragile arrangements

Every large Open Source project has found some way to keep its infrastructure running. Usually that means a mix of donated services, sponsorships, fundraising, cross-subsidy, or patronage from a single company.

The table below highlights the primary funding mechanisms various Open Source projects depend on, even though most projects combine several.

	Donated infrastructure	Multi-company sponsorship	Community funding	Single-company patronage
PyPI	☑	☐	☐	☐
Packagist	☐	☐	☐	☑
npm	☐	☐	☐	☑
WordPress	☐	☐	☐	☑
RubyGems	☐	☑	☑	☐
Drupal	☑	☑	☑	☐

The mix differs across ecosystems, and some rely on several mechanisms at once. But one thing stands out: none of these approaches tie funding directly to how much the infrastructure is used.

PyPI, the Python Package Index, illustrates the sponsorship model. It handles billions of downloads a day on infrastructure donated by Fastly, AWS, and Google Cloud. The Python Software Foundation described this arrangement's fragility in a post last October: if a single sponsor decides not to renew, it would cost them tens of thousands of dollars a month to replace the lost infrastructure.

Packagist, the main PHP package repository, follows a different approach. It is run by a private company that also sells a commercial product called Private Packagist. Revenue from the paid product subsidizes the free public registry. It's one of the more sustainable models out there, though it means a public good depends on one company's continued success.

npm tried to operate as an independent company, ran into serious financial trouble, and was eventually acquired by GitHub in 2020. The end result is that critical JavaScript infrastructure is now owned by Microsoft.

WordPress.org runs on a different version of the same dynamic: corporate patronage. Automattic, by far the ecosystem's largest commercial beneficiary, subsidizes most of the infrastructure. It works, but it also means that whoever funds the infrastructure controls it.

The FAIR project, a federated package manager backed by the Linux Foundation, was designed to give the WordPress ecosystem an independent alternative. The software works but its organizers recently stepped back after failing to secure long-term funding commitments.

RubyGems took the community fundraising route, launching a program last year asking businesses for $2,500 to $5,000 annually, with about 110 supporters needed to cover the registry's operations.

Drupal, the Open Source CMS I help lead, depends on the Drupal Association to run much of the infrastructure behind the project: Composer endpoints, GitLab repositories, CI pipelines, automatic update notifications, and more. Running all of this costs roughly $3 million a year. Funding comes from a mix of donated infrastructure, community funding, DrupalCon revenue, and sponsorship.

When the economics break, the consequences become visible. In February 2026, GNOME began redirecting Git traffic from its own GitLab to GitHub mirrors to reduce bandwidth costs. As a result, GitHub and its owner Microsoft now absorb some of GNOME's bandwidth cost.

Taken together, these examples point to the same underlying problem. Most Open Source infrastructure does not have a real business model. It survives through donations, corporate sponsorship, and community fundraising, rather than revenue tied to the value it delivers.

From steward to service provider

One direction that makes sense to me is a simple value exchange: keep core infrastructure free for individuals and small projects, while organizations using it at scale help pay for what they consume. Not as a donation, but as payment for the infrastructure their software depends on.

Some people will instinctively resist the idea of charging for the infrastructure behind an Open Source project. That reaction may feel familiar to anyone who remembers the early debates about paid contributors. At the time, many feared corporate money would drive volunteers away. In practice, the opposite happened. Projects grew, contributor bases expanded, and paid engineers became some of their most active contributors.

That does not mean every new funding idea is a good one. But instinctive discomfort alone is not a reason to reject it.

In Open Source, what looks like fairness often is not. Free for everyone sounds equitable, but the cost does not disappear. It is absorbed by those who can least afford it, while the organizations that benefit most often pay the least. When a Fortune 500 company consumes Open Source infrastructure for free, that is not a neutral outcome. It is a subsidy flowing in the wrong direction.

If the problem is that costs are disconnected from usage, the obvious place to start is linking them. Exactly how that would work in practice is a separate design question, and the answer will likely differ from one Open Source project to another. One possible approach is usage-based fees, tiered by download volume or API consumption. Questions about measurement, thresholds, and enforcement would need careful community discussion.

Governance is downstream of funding

If infrastructure funding models need to change, the obvious question is who decides. In Open Source, questions like this ultimately belong to the community.

But communities do not decide these things in a vacuum. In practice, governance tends to follow funding.

Discussions about Open Source infrastructure often focus on governance: who should control it and who gets to make the decisions. In reality, those questions are often settled by something simpler: who pays for it.

FAIR is a recent example. The project didn't fail because federation was the wrong idea. It failed because nobody built a business case compelling enough to fund it as an alternative.

When one organization pays for the infrastructure, it ultimately controls it. When a broader set of stakeholders funds it, governance broadens with it.

That is why Open Source infrastructure needs more than better fundraising. It needs a business model that connects the cost of operating shared infrastructure to the organizations that rely on it most.

Infrastructure that entire ecosystems depend on cannot rely indefinitely on goodwill alone. It deserves a business model.

Solving the funding problem is a prerequisite to solving the governance problem.

Thanks to Tiffany Farriss, Tim Lehnen, Gábor Hojtsy and Lauri Timmanee for reviewing my draft.

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Talking Drupal: Talking Drupal #543 - Commerce 3.x

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The Drop Times: Women in the Making of Community

Across the Drupal ecosystem, much of the work that keeps the project moving forward happens through sustained community effort. Developers maintain modules and review patches, accessibility specialists improve inclusive design practices, documentation writers clarify complex workflows, and organisers run DrupalCamps, DrupalCons, and local meetups that bring contributors together.

Women across the Drupal community play visible roles in many of these areas. They lead accessibility initiatives, maintain projects, organise community events, and guide product and platform discussions that influence how Drupal evolves. In recent years, these contributions have shaped areas ranging from documentation and mentoring to platform initiatives such as Drupal CMS and accessibility-driven improvements across the ecosystem.

International Women’s Day offers a moment to acknowledge that work without separating it from the technical core of the project. The stories in this week’s issue highlight the broader ecosystem in motion—from new developer tools and experimental modules to DrupalCon Chicago announcements and community initiatives reported over the past week.

With that context, here are the major stories from last week.

EVENT

ACCESSIBILITY

AmyJune Hineline Releases Accessibility Microlearning for Open Source Contributors

DRUPAL COMMUNITY

Fundraiser Launched to Support “Drupal in a Day” Workshop at DrupalCon Chicago

DISCOVER DRUPAL

We acknowledge that there are more stories to share. However, due to selection constraints, we must pause further exploration for now. To get timely updates, follow us on LinkedIn, Twitter, Bluesky, and Facebook. You can also join us on Drupal Slack at #thedroptimes.

Thank you.

Kazima Abbas
Sub-editor
The DropTimes

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The Drop Times: Ship Faster, Catch Bugs Earlier: How Georgia Rebuilt QA and UAT for 80+ Drupal Sites

Staging-server bottlenecks often slow releases, compress QA into the final days of a sprint, and leave stakeholders reviewing work too late to give meaningful feedback. In this DrupalCon North America 2026 session, Jasmyne Epps of Digital Services Georgia and James Sansbury of Tugboat explain how the State of Georgia redesigned QA and UAT for GovHub by moving testing and stakeholder review directly into pull requests. The result is a workflow that helps teams catch issues earlier, collaborate continuously, and scale delivery across more than 80 state agency websites. read more

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Jacob Rockowitz: Clauding at Symfony within Drupal

Dreaming about Claude Code

I lost sleep last night, dreaming about Claude Code. The night before, I was working too late and too hard on a coding problem, and I ended up dreaming about it and circling the solution. I was ruminating on how Claude Code fits into my development workflow. In my dream, I kept circling back to the question of how to code Drupal using AI.

I want to emphasize that I had a dream, not a nightmare. The dream was triggered by spending an entire day clauding at Symfony, more generally using Claude Code to improve my understanding of Symfony and how it is used in Drupal.

Improving my understanding of Symfony within Drupal

First and foremost, I see AI as a powerful tool, not a replacement for developers. AI is a disruptor affecting both junior and senior developers, requiring them to learn to use AI to develop and maintain software applications. An AI tidal wave is underway, and we need to get ahead of it rather than ignore it.

My long-term goal is to bring AI into my Drupal development workflow, yet I like circling around big challenges and seeking a learning task that is somewhat Drupal-adjacent. There are two Symfony-related issues/tasks on Drupal.org that I want to understand and maybe help resolve.

The first one is really simple. The latest version of Drupal CMS and, in turn, the AI Agents module can't generate content types. i.e., "create an Event content type" because the AI agent throws a passing generic $value parameter triggers an error. This is a minor bug, but I honestly don't understand Drupal's integration with Symfony's validation component well enough to contribute a patch.

A much larger second discussion I have been following for several years is the addition of integration...Read More

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#! code: DrupalCamp England 2026

The weekend of 28th February to the 1st March saw the second DrupalCamp England event with around 100 people attending the University of Salford, not far from Manchester, for the two day event.

I had submitted a talk and the camp organisers had accepted it and also decided to make me a featured speaker, which was an incredible honour. As such I was part of the communications being sent out in the weeks before the event.

Since this is more or less a local event for me I decided to travel in on both days rather than get a hotel or anything. The rain and wind of the previous week had abated and the Saturday morning saw some of the warmest (and driest) weather we had seen in the north west for a few months.

Saturday

The keynote on Saturday morning was The Augmented Future: Winning with AI with Dr. Phininder Balaghan, founder of Traversally. This was an look through the current state of AI, which Dr. Balaghan said changes every time he gives the talk.

Most companies these days have adopted an agile methodology, which has taken about 20 years to become widespread. Since the introduction of LLM AI systems a few years ago we have seen massive adoption across all industries.

Dr. Balaghan joked that we have reached the age of AI-gile, the new agile methodology.

At the moment we are using a collection of LLM agents that work together in a so-called "agentic" system to provide a coherent service. The next true advancement in AI systems will be thinking AI systems that are able to properly think about the input and respond. I think we are quite a long way from that yet and no amount of processing power or RAM is going to solve the problem that LLMs are just statistical word engines.

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Gábor Hojtsy: My experiment in bringing Drupal Module Upgrader back from the dead in less than 24 hours

My experiment in bringing Drupal Module Upgrader back from the dead in less than 24 hours

Drupal Module Upgrader (DMU) was created by Angie Byron and Adam Hoenich way back in 2014 at Acquia to help folks upgrade custom Drupal 7 modules to modern Drupal. It was magic. Cameron Zemek at PreviousNext built the crucial underlying library, Pharborist, which abstracted PHP manipulation into a generic dependency. Many relied on DMU to upgrade custom code, and it was even updated for Drupal 9; however, keeping it current over time proved challenging.

Gábor Hojtsy Sat, 03/07/2026 - 09:13 read more

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The Drop Times: Managing Multisite Configuration with Config Split at DrupalCon Chicago 2026

Managing multiple Drupal sites from a single codebase can deliver significant efficiencies, but configuration management quickly becomes complex as sites, features, and environments diverge. In his upcoming DrupalCon Chicago 2026 session, Jordan Thompson will demonstrate how Config Split can be used to structure multisite configuration in a predictable and maintainable way. The talk presents practical patterns, reusable templates, and workflow techniques designed to simplify configuration management across large Drupal multisite deployments. read more

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The Drop Times: AI, Drupal CMS, and Developer Tooling Dominate Drupal Dev Days 2026 Programme

The full programme for Drupal Developer Days 2026 shows how the Drupal ecosystem is responding to major shifts in modern web development. Artificial intelligence features prominently across multiple sessions, alongside discussions about Drupal CMS architecture, developer tooling, and evolving community practices. Together, the sessions suggest a community exploring how Drupal adapts to AI-assisted development while continuing to modernise its technical foundations. read more

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UI Suite Initiative website: Announcement – Display Builder 1.0.0-beta3 is out!

Hot on the heels of beta 2, we are happy to announce the release of Display Builder 1.0.0-beta3! This new release focuses on stability, with a solid round of bug fixes, but also ships meaningful new features. read more

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Drupal Mountain Camp: Join Us for Drupal Mountain Camp 2027

Join Us for Drupal Mountain Camp 2027

admin Fri, 03/06/2026 - 13:09

We are happy to announce that Drupal Mountain Camp is coming back for its 6th edition on March 2-4, 2027, in Davos, Switzerland.

Since 2017, we have been gathering at Davos Congress in the Swiss Alps for sessions, workshops, and contribution sprints that bring the Drupal community together. Developers, designers, project managers, agency leaders, and anyone passionate about open source - everyone has a place here.

The venue offers professional conference infrastructure, reliable connectivity, and an inspiring alpine setting. Davos is a 2-hour scenic train ride from Zurich airport through the Swiss Alps.

As with every edition, Drupal Mountain Camp is more than a conference. Expect skiing, snowboarding, fondue in the mountains, and social activities that bring the community closer together.

Calls for speakers and sponsors will be announced as planning progresses.

Stay up to date and plan ahead:

Subscribe to our newsletter for the latest updates
Follow us on Mastodon, Instagram, Bluesky, and LinkedIn
Plan your journey with our Sustainable Travel Guide to Davos

We look forward to seeing you in Davos.

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Electric Citizen: Supporting Access to Immigration Legal Help in Minnesota

When people face urgent legal questions, finding trustworthy information quickly matters.

Recently, Electric Citizen partnered with LawHelpMN.org to help launch a new landing page that gathers key immigration resources in one place: www.lawhelpmn.org/immigration-legal-help

The page was created in response to Operation Metro Surge, a controversial immigration enforcement effort that has created significant disruption and uncertainty for many Minnesota communities. The goal was to provide a clear starting point where people can quickly understand their rights and find trusted legal help.

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Debug Academy: Accelerating Drupal Core development

Accelerating Drupal Core development

A LinkedIn post (by Jay Callicott) made the case that Drupal core development needs to accelerate to meet modern (AI-driven) expectations, and adopting AI-DLC is the way to get there.

"Hot take [..] Drupal Core team needs to adopt AI-DLC [..] (as defined by AWS). AI does the code writing you are doing the orchestration. Who is with me??"

Increasing the velocity of evolving Drupal is a valid and worthwhile goal. The community had already identified the speed of Drupal Core development as an issue. Their solution was to move more quickly outside of Drupal core, in a (non-core) version of Drupal named "Drupal CMS".

ashrafabed Thu, 03/05/2026 read more

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Dripyard Premium Drupal Themes: Dripyard at DrupalCon Chicago

DrupalCon Chicago is going to be huge for Dripyard! We have one training, three presentations, one site template session, 400 stickers, and a very limited supply of beanies to give away!

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The Drop Times: Mike Herchel Previews DrupalCon Chicago Sessions on Theming, Contributions, and Drupal CMS

The DropTimes contacted Drupal contributor Mike Herchel ahead of DrupalCon Chicago to discuss the sessions he will present during the conference week. His responses outline a full-day training on modern Drupal theming, a session on contributing to Drupal projects with Matt Glaman, and participation in a keynote highlighting ongoing work around Drupal CMS and the ecosystem emerging around it. read more

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ImageX: Accessibility and SEO in Drupal: Working Better Together

Implementing accessibility best practices on your Drupal website and taking care of search engine optimization may seem like separate priorities. In reality, they are more closely intertwined than you might expect.

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DDEV Blog: DDEV v1.25.1 Docker Buildx Requirement

DDEV v1.25.1 introduced validation that checks for Docker Buildx, and you may encounter an error when running ddev start if your system isn't configured correctly. This post explains why this dependency exists, who's affected, and how to resolve it. Note that DDEV v1.25.2 will bundle a private Docker Buildx to eliminate this configuration requirement.

Who's Affected

Most users won't need to do anything. Docker Desktop, OrbStack, and Rancher Desktop bundle Docker Buildx automatically.

You may need to take action if you're using:

macOS with Lima or Colima - requires manual installation via Homebrew
Ubuntu or Debian with Docker from Ubuntu/Debian repositories instead of Docker's repositories - older versions don't meet requirements
NixOS - requires package update

If you're running Docker Desktop, OrbStack, or Rancher Desktop, you can skip this article.

The Error

When running ddev start on DDEV v1.25.1 without a compatible Buildx version, you'll see:

$ ddev start
Docker buildx check failed: compose build requires buildx 0.17.0 or later: docker CLI plugin "buildx" not found.
Please install buildx: https://github.com/docker/buildx#installing

Or if Buildx is installed but doesn't match the required version:

$ ddev start
Docker buildx check failed: compose build requires buildx 0.17.0 or later.
Installed docker buildx: 0.13.1 (plugin path: /usr/lib/docker/cli-plugins/docker-buildx)
Please update buildx: https://github.com/docker/buildx#installing

Why This Requirement Exists

This is an upstream dependency from Docker Compose, not a DDEV-specific choice.

Here's how we got here:

Docker Compose v2.37.0 (released June 2025) made the bake builder the default build backend
Docker Compose v2.40.2 (released October 2025) introduced a minimum version requirement for Docker Buildx (≥0.17.0)
DDEV v1.24.8 (released September 2025) updated to Docker Compose v2.39.3, which uses the bake builder by default
DDEV v1.25.1 (released February 2026) added validation to catch this configuration issue early and provide clear guidance

The requirement comes from Docker Compose itself. DDEV now validates your system configuration to prevent confusing build failures.

Solutions by Platform

macOS with Lima or Colima (or if you have this problem for any reason)

Install Docker Buildx via Homebrew:

brew install docker-buildx

After installation, configure Docker to find the plugin. Add cliPluginsExtraDirs to $HOME/.docker/config.json:

{
  "cliPluginsExtraDirs": ["/opt/homebrew/lib/docker/cli-plugins"]
}

You can see this information anytime with:

brew info docker-buildx

The post-install messages from Homebrew will show you the exact path for your system.

Debian

Debian 13 (Trixie) includes Docker Buildx v0.13.1 from the Debian repositories, which doesn't meet the ≥0.17.0 requirement.

Solution: Switch to Docker from the official Docker repositories.

Backup your DDEV projects with ddev snapshot -a.
Uninstall Docker packages from Debian repositories
Follow the Docker installation instructions in our documentation

The official Docker repositories provide current versions of all Docker components including Docker Buildx ≥0.17.0.

NixOS

NixOS users should track DDEV issue #8183. A NixOS patch is available - once merged, you'll get the fix through normal system updates without manual intervention.

Generic Solution

If the platform-specific solutions above don't work, you can manually place the docker-buildx binary in one of Docker's expected plugin directories:

Linux/macOS:

$HOME/.docker/cli-plugins/
/usr/local/lib/docker/cli-plugins/
/usr/local/libexec/docker/cli-plugins/
/usr/lib/docker/cli-plugins/
/usr/libexec/docker/cli-plugins/

Traditional Windows (not needed for WSL2):

%USERPROFILE%\.docker\cli-plugins\
%ProgramFiles%\Docker\cli-plugins\

See Docker's plugin manager source for Linux/macOS and Windows for the complete list.

Alternatively, place the binary anywhere and configure Docker to find it by adding cliPluginsExtraDirs to $HOME/.docker/config.json (or %USERPROFILE%\.docker\config.json on Windows):

{
  "cliPluginsExtraDirs": ["/path/to/your/custom/plugin/directory"]
}

What's Next for DDEV

We're working to make this smoother in upcoming releases:

DDEV v1.25.2 (upcoming) will likely bundle a private Docker Buildx that DDEV uses exclusively. This eliminates the system configuration requirement for most users. I'm working on this in PR #8198.

Future releases will transition from our private Docker Compose binary to the Docker Compose SDK. This gives DDEV more control over upstream dependencies and reduces configuration complexity.

Need Help?

If you're still seeing issues after following these steps, reach out in any of the support channels.

This article was edited and refined with assistance from Claude Code.

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UI Suite Initiative website: Video series - #01 Display Builder page layouts feature walkthrough

Build beautiful Drupal page layouts without writing a line of TWIG and CSSIf you've ever wished Drupal's block-based layout system came with a more visual, component-driven experience, the new Display Builder module is exactly what you've been waiting for.In this first video of the Display Builder series, Pierre walks through the Page Layouts feature, showing how fast you can build a fully styled, published page layout — no custom code required. read more

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Tag1 Insights: When Good Links Go Bad: How AI Cut Link Verification in Drupal’s Metatag Module from Hours to Minutes

At Tag1, we believe in proving AI within our own work before recommending it to clients. This post is part of our AI Applied content series, where team members share real stories of how they're using AI and the insights and lessons they learn along the way. Here, Sammy Gituko, Software Developer, explores how AI supported improvements to the Metatag module by speeding up the discovery, verification, and replacement of broken documentation links across 30+ plugin files from hours to minutes.

A Small Fix That Wasn’t So Simple

My first contribution to the Drupal Metatag module started with what looked like a simple issue: fixing broken external documentation links. The task was logged as Issue #3559765 Fix broken links in the Meta tags section , and at first, it seemed like a quick cleanup job. But the deeper I looked, the more it revealed about the fragility of open source documentation, and how AI can speed up the repetitive parts of technical contribution work while still requiring careful human judgment.

Broken links may not sound exciting, but they highlight a widespread challenge in open source maintenance. Documentation links age fast. Websites vanish. URL structures change without warning. And because the Metatag module contains dozens of plugin files pointing to different sources, even a small fix meant a lot of detail work.

How AI Accelerated the Research Phase

To begin, I scanned the src/Plugin/metatag/Tag/ directory, which contains over 30 plugin files. This was where AI added real value, not by writing code, but by making the background research faster and more structured. I found six that had broken or unreliable links:

SetCookie.php: Link to metatags.org was returning 404
Rating.php: Link to metatags.org was broken, though the RTA link worked
Google.php: Google webmasters link returned 404
Expires.php: Link to csgnetwork.com calculator had connection errors
Standout.php: Google News documentation was broken (404)
NewsKeywords.php: Google News documentation was broken (404)

For each broken link, I needed to verify the issue, find a reliable replacement from an authoritative source, confirm it worked and was stable, then update it in the code without disrupting formatting or introducing linting errors.

Finding Every Link

Checking each file manually would have been tedious. Using AI, I generated efficient grep patterns for discovering URLs across the whole directory, like this suggestion that matched multiple URL styles: https?://|www\. That one line let me identify every external link across 30+ plugin files in minutes.

Verifying What Was Broken

The next challenge was figuring out which links actually worked. Instead of opening them one by one, AI recommended using a simple curl command to automatically test HTTP status codes:

curl -s -o /dev/null -w "%{http_code}" "https://example.com"

This approach let me quickly categorize links as 200 (working), 404 (broken), or 301 (redirects), giving me a precise list of which needed attention.

Finding Better Sources

When replacing links, AI helped search for credible alternatives, suggesting sources like MDN, W3C, IETF, or Google Search Central. It also helped compare multiple options and recommend the best one.

When AI Needed a Human Touch

Despite its efficiency, AI couldn’t make every decision. Some choices depended on contextual understanding, deciding whether a replacement even made sense.

Google News Documentation

Two plugin files, Standout.php and NewsKeywords.php, both referenced Google News documentation that no longer existed. AI surfaced generic help pages, but none were relevant. Since the tags were already marked @deprecated, I chose to remove the links entirely. This was a judgment call informed by understanding the code’s context and the importance of avoiding misleading or obsolete references.

Content Rating (RTA) Documentation

In Rating.php, the existing RTA link technically worked but wasn’t reader-friendly. The AI proposed a few options, but ultimately, I picked Wikipedia’s page on content rating systems. It included the RTA standard, offered better context, and felt more accessible, a human decision about user experience, not just URL accuracy.

What This Taught Me

Several clear themes came out of this contribution:

Third-party documentation is fragile. Even long-established sources like metatags.org and csgnetwork.com can disappear or restructure, breaking countless references.
Redirects can cause silent problems. A 301 redirect still “works,” but introduces slower load times and unnecessary chains. Direct links are cleaner.
AI excels at repetitive verification. Checking and verifying dozens of URLs took minutes instead of hours.
Context remains human. AI found replacements but couldn’t know when removing links made more sense or why accessibility might matter more than originality.
Authoritative sources reduce maintenance. Linking to MDN, IETF, or W3C means fewer headaches for future maintainers and reviewers.

The Outcome

The final patch replaced or removed all broken documentation links:

Fixed with authoritative replacements:

SetCookie: MDN documentation
Google: Google Search Central
Expires: IETF RFC 1123
Rating: Wikipedia

Removed (no suitable or relevant replacements):

Standout : Google News documentation removed
NewsKeywords: Google News documentation removed

The workflow became smoother, faster, and easier to reproduce. Using AI to handle repetitive validation tasks allowed me to focus my attention on decisions that actually required human reasoning.

A Better Way Forward

This contribution showed how AI can accelerate contribution workflows without replacing the thoughtful judgment that open source development depends on. By blending AI-assisted discovery with context-aware decision-making, contributors can move faster and still produce work that’s accurate, accessible, and maintainable.

Maintaining external documentation links might never be glamorous, but it’s a perfect example of how AI can make quality improvements faster and more sustainable, one verified link at a time.

This post is part of Tag1’s AI Applied content series, where we share how we're using AI inside our own work before bringing it to clients. Our goal is to be transparent about what works, what doesn’t, and what we are still figuring out, so that together, we can build a more practical, responsible path for AI adoption.

Bring practical, proven AI adoption strategies to your organization, let's start a conversation! We'd love to hear from you.

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Dries Buytaert: Drupal 25th Anniversary Gala at DrupalCon Chicago

There is a big party happening at DrupalCon Chicago, and I can't wait.

On March 24th, we're celebrating Drupal's 25th Anniversary with a gala from 7–10 pm CT. It's a separate ticketed event, not included in your DrupalCon registration.

Some of Drupal's earliest contributors are coming back for this, including a few who haven't attended DrupalCon in years. That alone makes it special.

If you've been part of Drupal's story, whether for decades or just a few months, I'd love for you to be there. It's shaping up to be a memorable night.

The dress code is "Drupal Fancy". That means anything from gowns and black tie, to your favorite Drupal t-shirt. If you've ever wanted an excuse to dress up for a Drupal event, this is it!

Tickets are $125, with a limited number of $25 tickets underwritten by sponsors so cost isn't a barrier. All tickets must be purchased in advance. They won't be available at the door. Registration closes March 18th, so grab your tickets soon.

Organizations can reserve a table for their team. Even better, invite a few contributors to join you. It's a great way to give back to the people who helped build what your business runs on.

For questions or sponsorship opportunities, please reach out to Tiffany Farriss, who is serving as Gala Chair and part of the team coordinating the celebration.

Know someone who should be there? Share this with them.

What matters most is that you're there. I can't wait to celebrate together in Chicago.

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The Drop is Always Moving: A new alpha experimental "Admin" theme just landed in Drupal 12 dev (and 11 dev) which is a merge of the Claro and Gin themes. Gin historically extended Claro which caused complications on both sides. The merged theme allows to iron out things much...

A new alpha experimental "Admin" theme just landed in Drupal 12 dev (and 11 dev) which is a merge of the Claro and Gin themes. Gin historically extended Claro which caused complications on both sides. The merged theme allows to iron out things much faster and more effectively without duplication of efforts in two themes. Going forward the plan is for "Admin" to replace Claro. Until "Admin" becomes stable, Claro will remain the default admin experience. https://www.drupal.org/project/drupal/issues/3556948

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Matt Glaman: drupalorg-cli 0.8.0: GitLab issue fork and merge request commands

The 0.7.0 release was housekeeping — fixing the release notes command and clearing out deprecation warnings. 0.8.0 has two goals: add native GitLab issue fork and merge request commands, and make the CLI useful for developers using AI agents to assist with Drupal.org issues. read more

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The Drop is Always Moving: More good news in Drupal 12 development. Long time in the making, the Navigation module just replaced Toolbar as the default navigation experience in the upcoming Drupal version. Not only more customisable, the new UI is also faster to use even with...

More good news in Drupal 12 development. Long time in the making, the Navigation module just replaced Toolbar as the default navigation experience in the upcoming Drupal version. Not only more customisable, the new UI is also faster to use even with deep administration trees. https://www.drupal.org/project/drupal/issues/3575171

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The Drop is Always Moving: Historic moment in Drupal core! Migrate Drupal and Migrate Drupal UI will not be in Drupal 12 anymore. These are core modules dedicated to migrating Drupal 6 and Drupal 7 sites to core. Drupal 7 was end of life on January 5, 2025 while Drupal 6 EOL was...

Historic moment in Drupal core! Migrate Drupal and Migrate Drupal UI will not be in Drupal 12 anymore. These are core modules dedicated to migrating Drupal 6 and Drupal 7 sites to core. Drupal 7 was end of life on January 5, 2025 while Drupal 6 EOL was February 24th 2016. The modules will still be in Drupal 11 core until its end of line expected at the end of 2028. See https://www.drupal.org/node/3466088 for issues around all deprecated modules and themes.

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Specbee: Lazy Loading in Drupal - A simple trick that makes your site feel instantly faster

What if your Drupal site could feel faster without big changes? Lazy loading might be the easiest fix you’re not using. read more

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Talking Drupal: Talking Drupal #542 - Another AI Show

Today we are talking about The Good and the Bad of AI , How our panel feels about AI , and you guessed it more AI with guest Scott Falconer. We'll also cover Field Widget Actions as our module of the week.

For show notes visit: https://www.talkingDrupal.com/542

Topics

AI and Social Isolation
How We Use AI
Friction and Independence
Stack Overflow Debate
Collaboration and Team Culture
Is AI Inevitable
AI Hype Meets Costs
Adoption Cooling Signals
Pricing Inequality Risks
Open Source and PRs
Requirements and LLMs
Easy Tools Not Always Right
Juniors Learning and Patterns
Human Value and Ambiguity
Losing Cognitive Endurance
AI vs Social Media
Uniquely Human Skills

Resources

Stack overflow

Guests

Scott Falconer - managing-ai.com scott-falconer

Hosts

Nic Laflin - nLighteneddevelopment.com nicxvan John Picozzi - epam.com johnpicozzi Catherine Tsiboukas - mindcraftgroup.com bletch

MOTW Correspondent

Martin Anderson-Clutz - mandclu.com mandclu

Brief description:
- Have you ever wanted to enhance the Drupal content editing experience by allowing site builders to attach actionable buttons directly to field widgets on entity forms? There's a module for that.
Module name/project name:
- Field Widget Actions
Brief history
- How old: created in Oct 2025 by Artem Dmitriiev (a.dmitriiev) of 1x Internet, a founding member of the AI Initiative
- Versions available: 1.0.0-alpha1 and 1.3.0, both of which works with Drupal 10.3 and 11.1 or newer
Maintainership
- Actively maintained
- Security coverage
- Test coverage
- Documentation - includes Markdown files that explain how to set up and extend its capabilities
- Number of open issues: 12 open issues, 4 of which are bugs
Usage stats:
- 24 sites
Module features and usage
- With this module installed, a site builder can attach action buttons to form fields in Drupal entity forms, for example for creating nodes or taxonomy terms
- What happens when you click a button depends on what processor you associate with it, and the settings you configure for the processor. Processors can be provided by other modules, like AI or ECA.
- For example, you could attach a button to a tags field that when clicked will send the content of the body field to an AI agent that will return a set of suggested tags. Or, you could have it trigger an ECA model for a more deterministic flow
- This is all done using a plugin framework implemented by Field Widget Actions, so you also create your own custom processors to be used with action buttons
- One of the things that got me excited about working with the team behind Augmentor AI was the approach that module used to make AI something a user would manually trigger, and then can curate before the suggestions are saved. Field Widget Actions allows that same approach to be implemented with the AI ecosystem that is growing by leaps and bounds thanks to the team involved with Drupal's AI Initiative
- It's worth noting that Field Widget Actions used to be a submodule of the AI project, so if you're using a version of that older than 2.0, you may already have Field Widget Actions available in your codebase

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Centarro: Commerce Core 3.3.0 significantly improves order management

Commerce Core 3.3.0 completely reimagines how merchants interact with orders in the administrative back end. Common order management tasks are accessible from the order view page, and the edit tab will generally no longer be necessary.

This release resolved 102 issues, including bugs and feature requests, and the time was right to tackle longstanding order management requests we’ve heard from the merchants we support. Roadmap influence is a key benefit of working directly with Centarro on your Drupal Commerce projects. 🤓

Why redesign order management?

Orders in Drupal Commerce have always been collections of data entities of varying types. It’s all highly structured and enables complex fulfillment workflows, but managing those various entities was a fragmented experience.

To edit the billing address, you'd head to the order edit form, but you could only view the shipping address there. To change the shipping address, you'd navigate to the shipments tab and edit the relevant shipment(s) there instead. Updating order items meant working through an inline entity form on the order edit page, but the impact on pricing was opaque until submitted. Payment details weren't readily visible.

Each of these tasks used a different form, which meant different administrative contexts for what a CSR really regards as one transaction.

Single-page order management

The new order view page is a dashboard for everything related to the transaction. Adding, editing, and deleting order items, shipments, and billing profiles is now handled through modal dialogs that open directly on the order view page.

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The Drop Times: At the Crossroads of PHP

Across the PHP ecosystem, a hard conversation is beginning to take shape. In a recent opinion piece, Ashraf Abed challenges four major open-source communities—Drupal, Joomla, Magento, and Mautic—to confront a shared reality: slower growth, tighter budgets, and a thinning contributor base. All four are PHP-driven, Composer-based, and built on open-source collaboration. Each has solved complex problems at scale. Yet they now compete not only with proprietary SaaS platforms but also with a broader shift toward consolidation, platform ecosystems, and AI-assisted development that lowers switching costs for engineers.

The argument is not about merging code into a single technical stack. It is about strategic alignment. Fragmentation means four marketing engines, four leadership structures, four roadmaps, and parallel efforts solving overlapping problems. Agencies struggle to hire, contributors stretch across projects, and enterprise buyers hesitate when long-term sustainability feels uncertain. As experienced PHP developers move more easily between frameworks, the historical barriers between communities are no longer purely technical—they are cultural and organisational.

The risks are real. Governance models differ. Brand identity runs deep. Millions of production sites require long-term security and stability. No transition would be simple, and no decision would satisfy everyone. But dismissing the conversation outright may be shortsighted. Open source thrives on bold thinking, especially when the status quo shows signs of strain. If the PHP ecosystem wants to strengthen its talent pipeline and competitive position for the next decade, serious dialogue about collaboration, specialisation, or even partial consolidation deserves attention.

With that context, here are the major stories from last week.

INTERVIEW

Dan Frost on Drupal’s AI-Ready Architecture, Controlled AI, and AI-Mode SEO

EVENT

DISCOVER DRUPAL

We acknowledge that there are more stories to share. However, due to selection constraints, we pause here for this issue. For timely updates, follow us on LinkedIn, Twitter, Bluesky, and Facebook. You can also join us on Drupal Slack at #thedroptimes.

Thank you.

Alka Elizabeth
Sub-editor
The DropTimes

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MidCamp - Midwest Drupal Camp: Last Chance: MidCamp 2026 Call for Sessions Extended to March 13

We heard you... and we want to hear from more of you!

The MidCamp 2026 Call for Sessions has been extended. The new deadline is March 13, 2026.

If you had a session idea brewing but didn't quite get it across the finish line, now's your window. We extended the deadline because we want a lineup that reflects the full range of people who use, build, and care about Drupal — and we're not there yet without you.

What We're Looking For

MidCamp sessions are open to all skill levels and all corners of the Drupal ecosystem. Whether you're a developer with a deep technical dive, a project manager with hard-won lessons, a designer with a perspective the community needs, or an end user who figured something out the hard way — there is a place for your session at MidCamp.

We're especially interested in talks around:

Drupal AI — practical applications, integrations, and what's actually working in the field
Drupal CMS / Canvas — building with and extending Drupal's newest tools
Decoupled and headless implementations — real-world lessons from the front lines
Accessibility, equity, and inclusion — building a better, more accessible web
Community and contribution — how we grow the ecosystem together

Not sure if your idea fits? Submit it anyway. We'd rather review more proposals than miss a great talk.

How to Submit

Session submissions are open now through March 13, 2026.

👉 Submit your session here

Need help shaping your proposal? Join the #speakers channel on the MidCamp Slack — there are people there who will help you get it over the finish line.

Slack: https://mid.camp/slack

What Happens Next

After the submission window closes, our review team will evaluate proposals and notify selected speakers by April 9, 2026. Selected speakers will have until April 15 to confirm, and the full schedule will be published April 16.

MidCamp 2026 is May 12–14 in Chicago. We hope to see you on stage.

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SearXNG - Privacy-First Web Search for Drupal AI Assistants

If you’ve been following the rapid rise of AI‑driven chatbots and ‘assistant‑as‑a‑service’ platforms, you know one of the biggest pain points is trustworthy, privacy‑preserving web search. AI assistants need access to current information to be useful, yet traditional search engines track every query, building detailed user profiles.

Enter SearXNG - an open‑source metasearch engine that aggregates results from dozens of public search back‑ends while never storing personal data. The new Drupal module lets any Drupal‑based AI assistant (ChatGPT, LLM‑powered bots, custom agents) invoke SearXNG directly from the Drupal site, bringing privacy‑first searching in‑process with your content.

What is SearXNG?

SearXNG aggregates results from up to 247 search services without tracking or profiling users. Unlike Google, Bing or other mainstream search engines, SearXNG removes private data from search requests and doesn't forward anything from third-party services.

Think of it as a privacy-preserving intermediary: your query goes to SearXNG, which then queries multiple search engines on your behalf and aggregates the results, all while keeping your identity completely anonymous.

The Drupal SearXNG Module

The Drupal SearXNG module brings this privacy-focused search capability directly into the Drupal ecosystem. It connects Drupal with your preferred SearXNG server (local or remote), includes a demonstration block, and provides an additional submodule that integrates SearXNG with Drupal AI by offering an AI Agent Tool.

This integration is particularly powerful when combined with Drupal's growing AI ecosystem, including the AI module framework, AI Agents and AI Assistants API.

Key Benefits

Privacy by design

The most compelling benefit is complete privacy protection. When your Drupal AI assistant uses SearXNG to search the web:

No user tracking or profiling occurs
Search queries aren't stored or analysed
IP addresses remain private
No targeted advertising based on searches
Compliance with privacy regulations like GDPR

This makes it ideal for organisations in healthcare, government, education and any sector where data privacy is paramount.

Comprehensive search results

By aggregating results from up to 247 search services, SearXNG provides more diverse and comprehensive search results than relying on a single search engine. Your AI assistant gets a broader perspective, potentially finding information that might be missed by individual search engines.

Self-hosted control

Organisations can run their own SearXNG instance, giving them complete control over:

Which search engines to query
Rate limiting and usage patterns
Data residency requirements
Custom configurations and preferences
Complete audit trails

Getting started is remarkably straightforward thanks to SearXNG's official Docker image, which makes launching a local server as simple as running a single command. This means organisations can have their own private search instance running in minutes, without complex server configuration or dependencies.

Seamless AI integration

The module's AI Agent Tool integration means that Drupal AI assistants can seamlessly incorporate web search into their workflows. Whether it's a chatbot helping users navigate your site or an AI assistant helping content creators research topics, web search becomes just another capability in the assistant's toolkit.

Practical Use Cases

Internal knowledge assistants

Imagine a corporate intranet where employees use an AI assistant to find both internal documentation and external resources. The assistant can search your internal Drupal content while using SearXNG to find external information, all while maintaining complete privacy about what employees are researching.

Privacy-conscious educational platforms

Universities and schools increasingly need to protect student privacy. A Drupal-powered learning management system with an AI tutor can use SearXNG to help students research topics without creating profiles of their academic interests and struggles.

Government and public sector portals

Government organisations can leverage AI assistants to help citizens find information and services. Using SearXNG ensures that citizen queries remain private and aren't used for commercial purposes.

The Future of Privacy-First AI

The SearXNG Drupal module represents an important step forward in building AI systems that respect user privacy. As AI assistants become more prevalent in web applications, the ability to access current information without compromising privacy will become increasingly valuable.

Drupal's AI framework supports over 48 AI platforms, providing flexibility in choosing AI providers. By combining this with privacy-respecting search through SearXNG, organisations can build powerful, intelligent applications that align with growing privacy expectations and regulations.

Conclusion

Privacy and powerful AI don't have to be mutually exclusive. The SearXNG Drupal module proves that organisations can build intelligent, helpful AI assistants that respect user privacy. Whether you're building internal tools, public-facing applications, or specialised platforms, this module provides a foundation for privacy-first AI that can search the web without compromising user trust.

As data privacy regulations continue to evolve and users become more aware of digital privacy issues, tools like the SearXNG module will become increasingly essential. By adopting privacy-first approaches now, organisations can build user trust while delivering the intelligent, helpful experiences that modern web applications demand.

Find out more and download on the dedicated SearXNG Drupal project page.

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February 2026 Drupal for Nonprofits Chat

Join us THURSDAY, February 19 at 1pm ET / 10am PT, for our regularly scheduled call to chat about all things Drupal and nonprofits. (Convert to your local time zone.)

We don't have anything specific on the agenda this month, so we'll have plenty of time to discuss anything that's on our minds at the intersection of Drupal and nonprofits. Got something specific you want to talk about? Feel free to share ahead of time in our collaborative Google document at https://nten.org/drupal/notes!

All nonprofit Drupal devs and users, regardless of experience level, are always welcome on this call.

This free call is sponsored by NTEN.org and open to everyone.

Information on joining the meeting can be found in our collaborative Google document.

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Four Weeks of High Velocity Development for Drupal AI

While Artificial Intelligence is evolving rapidly, many applications remain experimental and difficult to implement in professional production environments. The Drupal AI Initiative addresses this directly, driving responsible AI innovation by channelling the community's creative energy into a clear, coordinated product vision for Drupal.

In this article, the third in a series, we highlight the outcomes of the latest development sprints of the Drupal AI Initiative. Part one outlines the 2026 roadmap presented by Dries Buytaert. Part two addresses the organisation and new working model for the delivery of AI functionality.

Authors: Arian, Christoph, Piyuesh, Rakhi (alphabetical)

Dries Buytaert presenting the status of Drupal AI Initiative at DrupalCon Vienna 2025

Converting ambition into measurable progress

To turn the potential of AI into a reliable reality for the Drupal ecosystem, we have developed a repeatable, high-velocity production model that has already delivered significant results in its first four weeks.

A Dual-Workstream Approach to Innovation

To maximize efficiency and scale, development is organized into two closely collaborating workstreams. Together, they form a clear pipeline from exploration and prototyping to stable functionality:

The Innovation Workstream: Led by QED42, this stream explores emerging technologies like evaluating Symfony AI, building AI-driven page creation, prompt context management, and the latest LLM capabilities to define what is possible within the ecosystem.
The Product Workstream: Led by 1xINTERNET, this team takes proven innovations and refines, tests, and integrates them into a stable Drupal AI product ensuring they are ready for enterprise use.

Sustainable Management through the RFP Model

This structure is powered by a Request for Proposal (RFP) model, sponsored by 28 organizations partnering with the Drupal AI Initiative.

The management of these workstreams is designed to rotate every six months via a new RFP process. Currently, 1xINTERNET provides the Product Owner for Product Development and QED42 provides the Product Owner for Innovation, while FreelyGive provides core technical architecture. This model ensures the initiative remains sustainable and neutral, while benefiting from the consistent professional expertise provided by the partners of the Drupal AI Initiative.

Professional Expertise from our AI Partners

The professional delivery of the initiative is driven by our AI Partners, who provide the specialized resources required for implementation. To maintain high development velocity, we operate in two-week sprint iterations. This predictable cadence allows our partners to effectively plan their staff allocations and ensures consistent momentum.

The Product Owners for each workstream work closely with the AI Initiative Leadership to deliver on the one-year roadmap. They maintain well-prepared backlogs, ensuring that participating organizations can contribute where their specific technical strengths are most impactful.

By managing the complete development lifecycle, including software engineering, UX design, quality assurance, and peer reviews, the sprint teams ensure the delivery of stable and well-architected solutions that are ready for production environments.

The Strategic Role of AI in Drupal CMS

The work of the AI Initiative provides important functionality to the recently launched Drupal CMS 2.0. This release represents one of the most significant evolutions in Drupal’s 25-year history, introducing Drupal Canvas and a suite of AI-powered tools within a visual-first platform designed for marketing teams and site builders alike.

The strategic cooperation between the Drupal AI Initiative and the Drupal CMS team ensures that our professional-grade AI framework delivers critical functionality while aligning with the goals of Drupal CMS.

Results from our first Sprints

The initial sprints demonstrate the high productivity of this dual-workstream approach, driven directly by the specialized staff of our partnering organizations. In the first two weeks, the sprint teams resolved 143 issues, creating significant momentum right from the first sprint.

Screenshot Drupal AI Dashboard

This surge of activity resulted in the largest regular patch release in the history of the Drupal AI module. This achievement was made possible by the intensive collaboration between several expert companies working in sync. Increased contribution from our partners will allow us to further accelerate development velocity, improving the capacity to deliver more advanced technical features in the coming months.

Screen recording Agents Debugger

Highlights from the first sprints

While the volume of work is significant, some new features stand out. Here are a few highlights from our recent sprint reviews:

AI Dashboard in Drupal CMS 2.0: Artem from 1xINTERNET presented the AI Dashboard functionality. This central hub for managing AI features and providers has been officially moved into the Drupal CMS 2.0 release, serving as the user interface for AI site management.
Advanced Automation: Anjali from QED42 presented new JSON and Audio field automators, which enable Drupal to process complex data types via AI.
The Context Control Center: Kristen from Salsa Digital presented the evolution of our context governance, converting config entities into content entities to enable revision management and better targeting.
The New Markdown Editor: Bruno from 1xINTERNET demonstrated a sleek new Markdown editor for prompt fields, featuring type-ahead autocomplete for variables and tokens. This will be released with the 1.3 version of the Drupal AI module.
Agents Debugger: To help developers see "under the hood," Marcus from FreelyGive introduced the new debugger module to trace AI agent interactions in real-time.
Technical Deep-Dives: We’ve seen steady progress on Symfony AI (presented by Akhil from QED42), Model Context Protocol (presented by Abhisek from DropSolid), and Reranking Models (led by Sergiu from DropSolid) to improve search quality.

Become a Drupal AI Partner

Our success so far is thanks to the companies who have stepped up as Drupal AI Partners. These organizations are leading the way in defining how AI and the Open Web intersect.
A huge thank you to our main contributors of the first two sprints (alphabetical order):

We invite further participation from the community. If your organization is interested in contributing expert resources to the forefront of AI development, we encourage you to join the initiative.

Sign up to join the Drupal AI Initiative

File attachments:

Drupal_AI_BlogPos.gif

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GitLab issue migration: how to use the new workflow

Now that some of the projects that opted-in for GitLab issues are using them, they are getting real world experience with how the issue workflow in GitLab is slightly different. More and more projects are being migrated each week so sooner or later you will probably run into the following situations.

Creating new issues

When creating issues, the form is very simple. Add a title and a description and save, that's it!

GitLab has different work items when working on projects, like "Incidents", "Tasks" and "Issues". Our matching type will always be "Issue". Maintainers might choose to use the other types, but all integrations with Drupal.org will be made against "Issue" items.

Labels (issue metadata)

As mentioned in the previous blog post GitLab issue migration: the new workflow for migrated projects, all the metadata for issues is managed via labels. Maintainers will select the labels once the issue is created.

Users without sufficient privileges cannot decide things like priority or tags to use. Maintainers can decide to grant the role "reporter" to some users to help with this metadata for the issues. Reporters will be able to add/edit metadata when adding or editing issues. We acknowledge that this is probably the biggest difference to working with Drupal.org issues. We are listening to feedback and trying to identify the real needs first (thanks to the projects that opted in), before implementing anything permanent.

Reporters will be able to add or edit labels on issue creation or edit:

So far, we have identified the biggest missing piece, the ability to mark an issue as RTBC. Bouncing between "Needs work" or "Needs review" tends to happen organically via comments among the participating contributors in the issue, but RTBC is probably what some maintainers look for to get an issue merged.

The previous are conventions that we agreed on as a community a while back. RTBC is one, NW (Needs Work) vs NR (Needs Review) is another one, so we could use this transition to GitLab issues to define the equivalent ones.

GitLab merge requests offer several choices that we could easily leverage.

Draft vs ready could mimic "Needs work" vs "Needs review". Contributors will switch this back and forth depending on the feedback needed on the code.
Merge request approvals could mimic "RTBC". This is something that can even be required (number of approvals or approval rules) per project, depending on the maintainer's preferences.

We encourage maintainers to look at the merge requests listing instead (like this one). Both "draft" vs. "ready" and "approved" are features you can filter by when viewing merge requests for a project.

Automated messages

There are automated messages when opening or closing issues that provide links related to fork management, fork information, and access request when creating forks, and reminders to update the contribution record links to the issue to track credit information.

Crosslinking between Drupal.org issues and GitLab issues

When referring to a Drupal.org issue from another Drupal.org issue, you can continue to use the [#123] syntax in the summary and comments, but enter the full URL in the "related issues" entry box.

When referring to a GitLab issue from another GitLab issue, use the #123 syntax, without the enclosing [ ].

For cross-platform references (Drupal to GitLab or GitLab to Drupal), you need to use the full URL.

What's next

Same as before, we want to go and review more of the already opted-in projects, collect feedback, act on it when needed, and then we will start to batch-migrate the next set: low-usage projects, projects with a low number of issues, etc.

The above should get us 80% of the way regarding the total number of projects to migrate, and once we have gathered more feedback and iterated over it, we'll be ready to target higher-volume, higher-usage projects.

Related blog posts:

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Drupal's AI Roadmap for 2026

This is cross-posted from Dries Buytaert's blog

For the past months, the AI Initiative Leadership Team has been working with our contributing partners to define what the Drupal AI initiative should focus on in 2026. That plan is now ready, and I want to share it with the community.

This roadmap builds directly on the strategy we outlined in Accelerating AI Innovation in Drupal. That post described the direction. This plan turns it into concrete priorities and execution for 2026.

The full plan is available as a PDF, but let me explain the thinking behind it.

Producing consistently high-quality content and pages is really hard. Excellent content requires a subject matter expert who actually knows the topic, a copywriter who can translate expertise into clear language, someone who understands your audience and brand, someone who knows how to structure pages with your component library, good media assets, and an SEO/AEO specialist so people actually discover what you made.

Most organizations are missing at least some of these skillsets, and even when all the people exist, coordinating them is where everything breaks down. We believe AI can fill these gaps, not by replacing these roles but by making their expertise available to every content creator on the team.

For large organizations, this means stronger brand consistency, better accessibility, and improved compliance across thousands of pages. For smaller ones, it means access to skills that were previously out of reach: professional copywriting, SEO, and brand-consistent design without needing a specialist for each.

Used carelessly, AI just makes these problems worse by producing fast, generic content that sounds like everything else on the internet. But used well, with real structure and governance behind it, AI can help organizations raise the bar on quality rather than just volume.

Drupal has always been built around the realities of serious content work: structured content, workflows, permissions, revisions, moderation, and more. These capabilities are what make quality possible at scale. They're also exactly the foundation AI needs to actually work well.

Rather than bolting on a chatbot or a generic text generator, we're embedding AI into the content and page creation process itself, guided by the structure, governance, and brand rules that already live in Drupal.

For website owners, the value is faster site building, faster content delivery, smarter user journeys, higher conversions, and consistent brand quality at scale. For digital agencies, it means delivering higher-quality websites in less time. And for IT teams, it means less risk and less overhead: automated compliance, auditable changes, and fewer ad hoc requests to fix what someone published.

We think the real opportunity goes further than just adding AI to what we already have. It's also about connecting how content gets created, how it performs, and how it gets governed into one loop, so that what you learn from your content actually shapes what you build next.

The things that have always made Drupal good at content are the same things that make AI trustworthy. That is not a coincidence, and it's why we believe Drupal is the right place to build this.

What we're building in 2026

The 2026 plan identifies eight capabilities we'll focus on. Each is described in detail in the full plan, but here is a quick overview:

Page generation - Describe what you need and get a usable page, built from your actual design system components
Context management - A central place to define brand voice, style guides, audience profiles, and governance rules that AI can use
Background agents - AI that works without being prompted, responding to triggers and schedules while respecting editorial workflows
Design system integration - AI that builds with your components and can propose new ones when needed
Content creation and discovery - Smarter search, AI-powered optimization, and content drafting assistance
Advanced governance - Batch approvals, branch-based versioning, and comprehensive audit trails for AI changes
Intelligent website improvements - AI that learns from performance data, proposes concrete changes, and gets smarter over time through editorial review
Multi-channel campaigns - Create content for websites, social, email, and automation platforms from a single campaign goal

These eight capabilities are where the official AI Initiative is focusing its energy, but they're not the whole picture for AI in Drupal. There is a lot more we want to build that didn't make this initial list, and we expect to revisit the plan in six months to a year.

We also want to be clear: community contributions outside this scope are welcome and important. Work on migrations, chatbots, and other AI capabilities continues in the broader Drupal community. If you're building something that isn't in our 2026 plan, keep going.

How we're making this happen

Over the past year, we've brought together organizations willing to contribute people and funding to the AI initiative. Today, 28 organizations support the initiative, collectively pledging more than 23 full-time equivalent contributors. That is over 50 individual contributors working across time zones and disciplines.

Coordinating 50+ people across organizations takes real structure, so we've hired two dedicated teams from among our partners:

QED42 is focused on innovation, pushing forward on what is next.
1xINTERNET is focused on productization, taking what we've built and making it stable, intuitive, and easy to install.

Both teams are creating backlogs, managing issues, and giving all our contributors clear direction. You can read more about how contributions are coordinated.

This is a new model for Drupal. We're testing whether open source can move faster when you pool resources and coordinate professionally.

Get involved

If you're a contributing partner, we're asking you to align your contributions with this plan. The prioritized backlogs are in place, so pick up something that fits and let's build.

If you're not a partner but want to contribute, jump in. The prioritized backlogs are open to everyone.

And if you want to join the initiative as an official partner, we'd absolutely welcome that.

This plan wasn't built in a room by itself. It's the result of collaboration across 28 sponsoring organizations who bring expertise in UX, core development, QA, marketing, and more. Thank you.

We're building something new for Drupal, in a new way, and I'm excited to see where it goes.

— Dries Buytaert

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Drupal's AI Roadmap for 2026

This is cross-posted from Dries Buytaert's blog