Explore how Drupal Canvas AI Agents transform simple prompts into fully functional web pages, enhancing automation, speed, and creative control.
Today we are talking about AI News,Drupal Hooks, and Drupal 11. We’ll also cover Webform Scheduled Tasks as our module of the week.
For show notes visit: https://www.talkingDrupal.com/526
TopicsNic Laflin - nLighteneddevelopment.com nicxvan John Picozzi - epam.com johnpicozzi
MOTW CorrespondentAvi Schwab - froboy.org froboy
Hi Readers,
At DrupalCon Europe 2025 in Vienna, Dries Buytaert used his keynote (“Driesnote”) to outline Drupal’s AI-first direction. He described AI as a major shift in how people use the web and emphasised that Drupal will evolve to meet it. Instead of focusing on new features, his keynote detailed a strategy to improve usability and integrate AI throughout the platform. The highlight was Drupal Canvas, a visual site-building tool designed to make Drupal more accessible for all users. For full context, see Dries’s State of Drupal presentation, October 2025.
The community has quickly embraced this direction. Over the past 18 months, contributions to Drupal have nearly doubled, helped by the “Starshot” initiative. That progress led to Drupal Canvas, which combines Drupal’s structured content system with a more intuitive interface. Dries described it as Drupal “repositioned for creators, marketers, and enterprise users.” Canvas launches alongside Site Templates, Recipes, Code Components, and a new Mercury design system, all aimed at simplifying setup and improving site-building efficiency.
According to the Canvas project page, users can now build and theme entire sites directly in their browser, with little or no code. Non-developers can design and edit visually, while editors can modify content anywhere on a page. Canvas still leverages Drupal’s core strengths—structured content and granular permissions—to maintain consistency and control. It’s a major step toward making Drupal approachable without losing its technical flexibility.
The mix of Canvas and AI has become a central topic across the Drupal community. Canvas introduces faster, collaborative site building, while new AI tools can generate page layouts, assist with content, and suggest updates within Drupal’s workflow. These improvements make it easier for small teams or non-technical users to maintain complex sites efficiently. A production-ready Drupal Canvas 1.0 is expected in November 2025, becoming the default experience in Drupal CMS 2.0 by January 2026, followed by a template marketplace in March 2026.
DISCOVER DRUPALWe 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.
Sincerely,
Kazima Abbas,
Sub-editor, The DropTimes.
The digital experience industry is at a crossroads. We’ve spent the past decade evolving from simple CMS websites to full-fledged Digital Experience Platforms (DXPs) that promised to manage every touchpoint. Yet, as we stand in 2025, it’s clear that the next leap forward won’t come from yet another all-in-one platform. It will come from a new philosophy altogether. I call this new paradigm DEEP, or Digital Experience Enablement Platform.
DEEP: The Post-Platform OS for Intelligent Experience EcosystemsDEEP: The Post-Platform OS for Intelligent Experience EcosystemsMonday, October 27, 2025 - 10:30Have you ever created a form in Drupal that had a dozen or so fields and looked like a long, messy list? Or maybe you wanted to limit the number of characters in a text field, but didn't know how to do it without programming? These and many other problems are solved by 10 modules that extend the standard Drupal Field module. The tools I will present in this article are worth knowing if you are an administrator or product owner of a Drupal site. The text is based on my video from the Nowoczesny Drupal channel.
Drupal continues to be my favorite playground on the web — not just because it’s powerful, but because there’s so much creativity and humor in the community. In the post 12 fun modules for Drupal, I listed a few amusing modules that showed developers sometimes have a twinkle in their eye. Now it’s time for another round: more quirky, charming, and delightfully unnecessary add-on modules that make Drupal a little more… human.
Some of them aren’t supported under Drupal.org’s security policy, so keep that in mind when using them. But it’s always fun to download and test them out.
Halloween lightIt’s getting close to All Saints’ weekend, or Halloween as it’s increasingly called here in our long, narrow country. Why not decorate a bit and put a row of glowing pumpkins at the top of your website?
Read more and find the module at https://www.drupal.org/project/halloween_lights
Happy New Year and Merry Christmas!A similar module is Happy New Year and Merry Christmas!, which adds blinking Christmas tree lights at the top of your website. You can set the dates during which the module should be active, so if you want, you can celebrate Christmas and New Year all year round — or right in the middle of summer!
Read more and find the module at https://www.drupal.org/project/happy_new_year
KhaaaaaaanOne of the most classic Drupal modules is Khaaaaaaan — and perhaps also the nerdiest. Made by developers, for developers. It doesn’t even have a release for Drupal 8 and up, so if you want to play around with this one, you’ll have to go back to the roots and install Drupal 6 or Drupal 7.
Read more and find the module at https://www.drupal.org/project/khaaaaaaan
FuturamaWhen Futurama came out in the late 1990s, I was instantly hooked. I loved the concept of the wonderful antihero Fry, who, through chance and a workplace accident, finds himself in the year 3000 and has to adapt to life there. All the pop culture references were spot-on, the episodes hilarious. I was probably the perfect target audience. So this module really speaks to me. It randomly displays quotes in a block, making it easy to place in your theme.
Read more and find the module at https://www.drupal.org/project/futurama
FlushHow about a nice little flushing sound when you clear the cache through the interface? If you’d like to spice up your site with a sound effect like that, this is the module for you. It might get a bit annoying when you’re developing new functionality or tweaking your theme design and need to clear the cache frequently. But hey — it’s fun!
Read more and find the module at https://www.drupal.org/project/flush
BrexitPerhaps not the most current module anymore, but what a brilliant way to express either support or skepticism toward Brexit. The module description might be the funniest part. How about this:
Provides coffee() as an alternative for t(), as t() shortage may occur after Brexit.
Hide EU cookie compliance messages for traffic from the UK, since the British won’t have to deal with that nonsense anymore.
Read more and find the module at https://www.drupal.org/project/brexit
There are dozens of older modules out there that only work with Drupal 6 and Drupal 7. As Drupal has become a better and more enterprise-oriented platform, it feels like fewer and fewer humor- and entertainment-focused modules are being made. But every now and then, one pops up — and when it does, I’m there to bookmark it so I can write about it here on my site.
To build scalable websites, start by creating solid, reusable, and customizable frontend components. Flexible and dynamic components not only help developers by reducing code duplication and complexity, but they also enhance the editor’s experience by providing options to control how content is displayed. The way these options are exposed to content creators depends on your site’s architecture and Drupal configuration.
In this post, I’ll be using the powerful Paragraphs Drupal module in combination with the Style options module. Paragraphs has a robust ecosystem, and its key features are being considered for the Canvas, formerly Drupal Experience Builder.
Our main goal is to create a tool that site builders love, with an amazing out-of-the-box experience. By integrating key features from Paragraphs, we also aim to create a unified solution that reduces fragmentation, accelerates innovation, and ensures Drupal remains at the forefront of site building. - Dries.[1]
Consider the component below which is pretty straight forward by nature but can be customized in several ways to create interesting content displays.
Card with image and text side by side with white background
Card with image and text side by side in reversed order with dark background
Card with image and text side by side in reversed order with white background
To achieve the various front-end displays shown above, we simply pass a CSS modifier class to the component and write the corresponding styles. But how can content creators choose the display they want during content creation?
The Style Options moduleProviding customization options to content editors through a UI typically requires storing data in the database—often by creating new fields, entity view modes, entity references, and more.
The Style options module offers an appealing alternative because it eliminates the need for additional fields or entity view modes. Instead, it stores all configuration options in a YAML file located in the root of your theme or module. The module includes an example file, example.style_options.yml, which provides excellent examples of customization options. It’s worth noting that this is considered a developer-focused module, as it does not provide a UI for configuration.
Install and Configure Style OptionsInstall and enable the style_options module as you normally do other modules.
Either create a new paragraph type or edit an existing one you wish to provide styles options to and enable the Style Options behavior as shown in the screenshot below.
Lastly, be sure your paragraph types templates use the attributes variable as this is how Style options passes the required attributes such as CSS classes to your templates.
The Style options module provides three plugins:
For simplicity of this post, I'll only cover the CSS Class plugin as this is the one I used the most. You should check out the other two plugins though.
Let's take a look at a simple example where provide editors with options to change the side the image appears in the Card component above.
Create the styles option configuration file in the root of your module or theme with the naming convention [module_name].style_options.yml or [theme_name].style_options.yml.
# my_theme.style_options.yml options: image_side: plugin: css_class label: 'Select the content direction' multiple: false options: - label: Select - label: Image on Left class: image-left - label: Image on Right class: image-right contexts: paragraphs: _defaults: options: ... my_paragraph: options: image_side: trueExample of styles to customize a component's border style.
Breaking it all downoptions defines the section for all available style options.
image_side is an arbitrary name related to the style you wish to implement. This is only an example. In a real project I would try to use a more general name that could apply to more paragraph types (i.e. content_order, content_direction, etc.).
plugin is one of the three available plugins I described earlier (css_class, background_color, background_image).
label is the label Editors see followed by a set of options.
multiple is a boolean type key which determines if multiple options selection is allowed.
options is an array of available options for Editors to choose from.
label is the label of an individual option
class is the actual CSS class you want to pass to the component.
Note: If you omit the class key (as in line 9), no class will be passed. This is common when using the first item’s label as the default option in the select field. For example, the word "Select" appears as the default but doesn’t pass any class. See next screenshot.
contexts defines which options should be available for specific contexts (i.e. Paragraph Types, Layouts, etc.)
paragraphs defines a section for paragraph types to make use of the options defined within the options section (line 3). See the project's README for other contexts.
_defaults allows to define any style option as defaults for all paragraphs you choose to use. This avoids repeating the same configuration for each paragraph type.
my_paragraph is the ID for the paragraphs I want to configure with specific options (i.e. image_side).
How are options selections tracked by Drupal?Earlier, I noted that using Style Options to manage component behavior reduces interaction with Drupal’s configuration and database compared to adding fields or view modes. However, Drupal still tracks the options editors select.
The second options: key (line 7) is a zero-based index array, meaning values start at 0 and increment by order: 0, 1, 2…. Drupal stores these values like any other select field. If you inspect the select field in the edit form, you’ll see each <option> element has a value attribute matching its index. See screenshot.
Example of the select field and its value for style options.
Why is this important?Since Drupal uses the options index value to track options selected by users, altering this order by rearranging, adding or removing options after it has been in use, will result in components styles and/or behavior not working as expected.
Let's see a quick example using the original configuration we created earlier. I'm omitting all but the necessary code for simplicity.
options: - label: Select # Index value = 0 - label: Image on Left class: image-left # Index value = 1 - label: Image on Right class: image-right # Index value = 2Let's say we want to remove the Image on Left options as it seems redundant because the Card's default state (Image on the left), should require no CSS class.
options: - label: Select # Index value = 0 - label: Image on Right class: image-right # Index value = 1With this change:
As you can probably guess, if Drupal's database is not updated accordingly, the behavior of existing cards will change.
How to solve this issue?Sometimes, you need to alter a component’s options after its original configuration. When this happens, Drupal’s database must be updated to reflect the correct values. How you handle this is up to you—sometimes a simple preprocessor works, while other cases may require a more complex data migration script.
Keep in mind, this isn’t a Style Options issue; it’s simply how databases and data storage works when fields or options are changed or removed.
In closingProviding customization options for components offers benefits like better UX and reduced code duplication. However, too many options can overwhelm users and have the opposite effect. Be selective—offer only the essentials to keep the experience simple and effective.
Be sure to learn about the other two plugins the Style options module offers: background image and background color. Also, if you need to improve your layout paragraphs, take a look at the Layout options module.
FootnotesEvery Drupal website has its own beautiful story to tell, but even the best stories can stay in the shadows if no one can find them. That’s where search engine optimization (SEO) steps in. By following Drupal’s SEO best practices, you can make sure your story successfully reaches the people who are looking for it.
DrupalCon Vienna highlighted AI, $1M Drupal AI funding, and the human side of tech through community, diversity, and well-being initiatives.
Debugging Drupal involves using tools to display errors, inspect variables, and step through code. Knowing these techniques is crucial for troubleshooting issues like the White Screen of Death (WSOD) and can prevent hours of frustration.
The video above covers basic error display configuration, advanced debugging with Xdebug, and practical tools like Devel, WebProfiler, and Ignition for productive Drupal development.
Building an AI policy that’s rooted in practical experience, not hype
As generative AI tools like ChatGPT, Microsoft Copilot, Google Gemini, and Claude have become ubiquitous in our workplaces, many organizations are still struggling with how to adopt them effectively. Some companies are telling employees they need to use AI as much as possible, but aren't providing clarity and guardrails on how to do so. Others avoid AI tools entirely, worried about the risks and uncertainties around their use.
The reality, as commentator Anil Dash recently observed, is that most people who work in technology have a very consistent view on AI:
"Technologies like LLMs have utility, but the absurd way they've been over-hyped, the fact they're being forced on everyone, and the insistence on ignoring the many valid critiques about them make it very difficult to focus on legitimate uses where they might add value."
As a result, the practical voices asking "how do we use this responsibly in our actual work?" are drowned out and many organizations end up without any clear guidance about where AI adds value and where it doesn't. This can create an uneven playing field where some workers are using AI without any guardrails, while others stay away completely, avoiding use cases that might save time and money.
How do you create an AI workplace policy?At Palantir, we found ourselves in this position last year. As a digital strategy and development consultancy, we're naturally curious about new technologies and how they might benefit our clients. Several of our team members had been experimenting with AI tools for some time, looking for ways they might improve the quality of our work.
As we started using these tools more frequently, however, the questions multiplied faster than answers:
Many members of our team were excited about AI's potential, but needed clear direction and guardrails to harness that enthusiasm safely and effectively. More importantly, we needed to level the playing field-creating an environment where everyone felt empowered to use AI tools appropriately rather than some people forging ahead while others held back out of uncertainty.
We wanted to treat AI like a normal technology. That meant applying the same thoughtful evaluation, risk assessment, and implementation practices we'd use for any other tool-without the extremes of either blind enthusiasm or complete avoidance.
The stakes are higher than you thinkBefore diving into our solution, it's worth understanding why this matters so much. Without proper guidelines, the risks extend far beyond individual productivity gains or losses. Teams operating without AI policies face several serious challenges:
We realized that creating our own AI policy wasn't just a nice-to-have-it was essential for building a workplace culture where AI use could be transparent, responsible, and valuable for everyone. We needed a framework that would create buy-in across the organization while prioritizing quality, safety, and security.
We needed to be part of the reasonable majority: treating AI as a normal technology, subject to thoughtful evaluation and appropriate controls, focused on legitimate uses rather than hype.
The question wasn't whether we needed an AI policy. The question was how to build one that actually worked.
Establishing an AI Working GroupOne of our first realizations was that creating an effective AI policy couldn't be a solo effort or even a small, homogeneous group project. AI touches every part of how we work-from the code our developers write to the strategies our consultants craft to the way our project managers coordinate client relationships. If we wanted a policy that would actually be useful (and used), we needed perspectives from across the organization.
We decided to formalize our approach by creating an AI Policy Working Group. This wasn't just a committee-it was a cross-functional team with a specific charter: drafting policy for the safe, private, secure, and ethical use of AI at Palantir.net.
The working group structure gave us several advantages. It provided legitimacy and resources for the work, created clear accountability, and ensured that policy development was treated as a priority rather than a side project. Most importantly, it established a framework that could continue beyond the initial policy creation to handle ongoing updates and new challenges.
We started by identifying team members who had two crucial qualities: genuine interest in AI tools and expertise in different domains of our work. These weren't necessarily the most technical people or the biggest AI enthusiasts. Instead, we looked for people who could bridge the gap between AI capabilities and real work requirements.
A project manager who'd been using AI to draft client communications had different insights than a developer using it for code review, and both perspectives were essential. We needed people who understood not just what AI could do, but how it fit into our actual workflows and client relationships. We also needed to include members of our operations and leadership teams who could speak to compliance and data safety concerns.
Identifying key themes and establishing accountabilityOur discovery process started with structured interviews with key stakeholders across the organization. We talked to leadership, project managers, and team members who were already using AI tools in their work. The goal wasn't to gather opinions about AI in general, but to understand specific challenges, concerns, and requirements our policy would need to address.
Several clear themes emerged from these discovery interviews, and for each one, we identified who would be responsible for implementation:
1. Human accountability must remain paramountThere was strong consensus that regardless of how AI was used, humans needed to remain fully accountable for the quality and outcomes of their work. AI should be used to enhance human capabilities, not replace human judgment.
Who owns this: Project teams are responsible for ensuring AI tools are used in a way that delivers value and maintains human oversight. Team members remain fully accountable for the quality, substantial completion, and outcome of AI-assisted work-treating AI assistance similarly to collaborating with another team member.
2. Data privacy and security are non-negotiableTeam members needed clear guidance about what data could and couldn't be shared with AI tools. We also needed to have clear rules ensuring client data would never be used to train third-party AI tools.
Who owns this: Our Systems & Infrastructure team establishes the process for evaluating new AI tools, decides which ones are approved for use, and assesses ongoing security and compliance. They conduct vendor assessments with robust SLAs and ensure tools don't use company or client data to train their models.
3. Transparency with clients is essentialSome of our clients already had their own AI policies that restricted or required disclosure of AI use. Others were curious about how we were leveraging AI for their benefit. We needed clear protocols to navigate these conversations.
Who owns this: Project teams ensure tools are used in a way that is consistent with client policy requirements and restrictions. They're responsible for proactively communicating with clients (and each other) how AI is being used on their projects, reviewing client-specific AI policies, and documenting AI usage in workflows.
4. We need practical "do's and don'ts"Team members wanted concrete, actionable guidance. They didn't need us to solve the big philosophical questions about AI's role in society-they needed to know whether it was okay to use ChatGPT to help draft a project proposal, or how to disclose AI usage in a client report.
Who owns this: The AI Working Group provides advice, consultation, and support to team members, helping translate policy into practical day-to-day decisions. Our Operations team navigates regulatory requirements, liability questions, and evolving legal frameworks, including avoiding discriminatory use of AI in employment decisions and performance evaluations.
Making it work in practiceThe key to our working group's effectiveness was balancing structure with flexibility. We had regular check-ins and clear deliverables, but we also made space for organic collaboration and iteration. People could contribute according to their expertise and availability without feeling overwhelmed.
We also made the process transparent from the beginning, using shared documents and collaborative spaces so anyone could see our progress and thinking. This transparency proved valuable later when we moved to company-wide review and adoption. And of course, we used AI tools throughout the policy development process to help synthesize team member inputs and iterate on language more efficiently.
Most importantly, we kept the focus practical rather than philosophical. While we certainly discussed the broader implications of AI, our primary goal was creating something our colleagues could actually use in their daily work.
The resultsAfter releasing a draft for comment and review in December 2024, we officially implemented our Generative AI Usage Policy in January of this year. Since then we've developed new product and service offerings as part of an internal "skunkworks" program, including our custom AI content auditing tool that cuts the time and cost of content audits by 30-50%. We have also implemented Onyx as an internal tool that brings together internal information from sources that were currently locked in their own silos.
Our team members regularly use company-approved AI tools like Gemini, GitHub Copilot, and Warp to assist with research, code development, drafting documentation, and debugging. Our code is not written by AI-rather, AI assists developers by suggesting code completions, helping identify bugs, and accelerating routine tasks, while humans make all architectural decisions, conduct peer reviews, ensure security compliance, and maintain accountability for quality. We treat AI assistance similarly to collaborating with another team member: the human remains fully responsible for the work product's accuracy, security, and appropriateness.
As a company that does a lot of work with Drupal, we've also been closely following the work of the Drupal AI Initiative to build tools that empower teams to create intelligent experiences with complete oversight of AI operations. With over 290 AI modules already available and integrations spanning 21 major providers, Drupal is already a leading platform for AI integration. At DrupalCon Vienna last week, Drupal project lead Dries Buytaert shared his vision for Drupal as a leading AI site-building platform.
In some cases, AI agents are already handling routine quality assurance tasks like ensuring alt text completeness, validating heading hierarchies, checking reading levels, and monitoring brand consistency. Looking forward, we see AI playing increasingly sophisticated roles in website management and optimization.
What we learnedBy treating AI as a normal technology rather than either a silver bullet or an existential threat, we found our way to a middle ground that we believe more accurately reflects AI's capabilities and challenges. Our working group didn't just produce a policy document-it created organizational buy-in, practical guidance that teams actually use, and a framework that continues to evolve as the technology changes.
We've made our policy template available on GitHub as a starting point, but the real value isn't in copying our specific rules-it's in building your own cross-functional working group, conducting discovery with your stakeholders, and creating guidelines that reflect your organization's values and needs. The goal isn't to have perfect answers to every AI question. The goal is to create an environment where your team can focus on legitimate uses that add value, with clear guidance on how to do so safely, ethically, and effectively.
This post was written with the assistance of Anthropic Claude. The cover image was generated by Adobe Firefly.
This blog has been re-posted and edited with permission from Dries Buytaert's blog.
In my DrupalCon Vienna keynote, I talk about how Drupal is adapting to an AI-driven web through AI-enabled visual editing, site templates, autonomous agents, and workflow orchestration.
The web is changing fast. AI now writes content, builds web pages, and answers questions directly, often bypassing websites entirely.
People often wonder what this means for Drupal, so at DrupalCon Vienna, I tackled this head-on. My message was simple: AI is the storm, but it's also the way through it. Instead of fighting AI, we're leaning into it.
My keynote focused on how Drupal is evolving across four product areas. We're making it easier to get started with Site Templates, enabling visual site building through Drupal Canvas, accelerating development with AI assistance, and exploring complex workflows with new orchestration tools.
If you missed the keynote, you can watch the video below, or download my slides (62 MB).
Vienna felt like a turning point. People could see the pieces coming together. Drupal is finding its footing in the AI era, leading in AI innovation, and ready to help shape what comes next for the web.
Growing Drupal with Site TemplatesOne of the most important ways to grow Drupal is to make it easier and faster to build new sites. We began that work with Recipes, a way to quickly add common features to a site. Recipes help people go from idea to a website in hours instead of days.
At DrupalCon Vienna, I talked about the next step in that journey: our first Site Template. Site Templates build on Recipes and also include a complete design with layouts, visual style, and sample content. The result is that you can go from a new Drupal install to a fully working website in minutes. It will be the easiest way yet to get started with Drupal.
Next, we plan to introduce more Site Templates and launch a Site Template Marketplace where anyone can discover, share, and build on templates for different use cases.
A new visual editing experienceAt DrupalCon Vienna, the energy around Drupal Canvas was infectious. Some even called it "CanvasCon". Drupal Canvas sessions were often standing room only, just like the Drupal AI sessions.
I first showed an early version of Drupal Canvas at DrupalCon Barcelona in September 2024, when we launched Drupal's Starshot initiative. The progress we've made in just one year is remarkable. My keynote showed parts of Drupal Canvas in action, but for a deeper dive, I recommend watching this breakout session.
Version 1.0 of Drupal Canvas is scheduled for November 2025. Starting in January 2026, it will become the default page builder in Drupal CMS 2.0. After more than 15 months of development and countless contributors working to make Drupal easier for everyone, it's hard to believe we're almost there. This marks the beginning of a new chapter for how people create with Drupal.
What excites me most is what this solves. For years, building pages in Drupal required technical expertise. Drupal Canvas gives end-users a visual page builder that is both more powerful and easy to use. Plus, it supports React, which means front-end developers can contribute using skills they already have.
Drupal's accidental AI advantageEvery content management system faces defining moments. For Drupal, one came with the release of Drupal 8. We rebuilt Drupal from the ground up, adopting modern design patterns and improving configuration management, versioning, workflows, and more.
The transition was hard, but here is the surprising part: ten years later those decisions gave Drupal an unexpected advantage in today's AI-driven web. The architecture we created is exactly what AI systems need today. When AI modifies content, you need version control to roll back mistakes. When it builds pages, you need structured data, permissions, and workflows. Drupal already has those capabilities.
For years, Drupal prioritized flexibility and robustness while other platforms focused on ease of use. What once felt like extra complexity now makes perfect sense. Drupal has quietly become one of the most AI-ready platforms available.
AI is the storm, and the way through the stormAs I said in my keynote: "Some days AI terrifies me. An hour later it excites me. By the evening, I'm tired of hearing about it.". Still, we can't ignore AI.
I first introduced AI as part of Starshot. Five months ago, it became its own dedicated track with the launch of the Drupal AI initiative. Since then, twenty two agencies have backed it with funding and contributors, together contributing over one million dollars. This is the largest fundraising effort in Drupal's history.
The initiative is already producing impressive results. At DrupalCon Vienna, we released Drupal AI version 1.2, a major step forward for the initiative.
In my keynote, I also demonstrated three new AI capabilities:
Earlier this year, I wrote about the great digital agency unbundling. As AI automates more technical work, agencies need to evolve their business models and find new ways to create value.
One promising direction is orchestration: building systems and workflows that connect AI agents, content platforms, CRMs, and marketing tools into intelligent, automated workflows. I think of it as DXP 2.0.
Most organizations have complex marketing technology stacks. Connecting all the systems in their stack often requires custom code or repetitive manual tasks. This integration work can be time-consuming and hard to maintain.
Modern orchestration tools solve this by automating how information flows between systems. Instead of writing custom code, you can use no-code tools to define workflows that trigger automatically. When someone fills out a form, the system creates a CRM contact, sends a welcome email, and notifies your team without any manual work.
In my keynote, I showed how ECA and ActivePieces can work together. Jürgen Haas, who created ECA, and I collaborated on this integration. ECA lets you define automations inside Drupal using events, conditions, and actions. ActivePieces is an open source automation platform similar to Zapier or n8n.
This approach allows us to build user experiences that are not only better and smarter, but also positions Drupal to benefit from AI innovation happening across the broader ecosystem. The idea resonated in Vienna. People approached me enthusiastically with related projects and demos, including tools like Flowdrop or Drupal's MCP module.
Between now and DrupalCon Chicago, we're inviting the community to explore and expand on this work. Join us in #orchestration on Drupal Slack, test the new Orchestration module, connect more automation platforms, or help improve ECA. If this direction proves valuable, we'll share what we learned at DrupalCon Chicago.
Building the future togetherAt DrupalCon Vienna, I felt something shift. Sessions were packed. People were excited about Site Templates and the Marketplace. Drupal Canvas drew huge crowds, and even more agencies signed up to join the Drupal AI initiative. During contribution day, more people than usual showed up looking for ways to help.
That energy in Vienna reflected something bigger. AI is changing how people use the web and how we build for it. It can feel threatening, and it can feel full of possibility, but what became clear in Vienna is that Drupal is well positioned at this inflection point, with both momentum and direction.
What makes this moment special is how the community is responding with focus and collaboration. We are approaching it as a much more coordinated effort, while still leaving room for experimentation.
Vienna showed me that the Drupal community is ready to take this on together. We have navigated uncharted territory before, but this time there is a boldness and unity I have not seen in years. That is the way through the storm. I am proud to be part of it.
I want to extend my gratitude to everyone who contributed to making my presentation and demos a success. A special thank you to Adam G-H, Aidan Foster, ASH Sullivan, Bálint Kléri, Cristina Chumillas, Elliott Mower, Emma Horrell, Gábor Hojtsy, Gurwinder Antal, James Abrahams, Jurgen Haas, Kristen Pol, Lauri Eskola, Marcus Johansson, Martin Anderson-Clutz, Pamela Barone, Tiffany Farriss, Tim Lehnen, and Witze Van der Straeten. Many others contributed indirectly to make this possible. If I've inadvertently omitted anyone, please reach out.
The web is changing fast. AI now writes content, builds web pages, and answers questions directly, often bypassing websites entirely.
People often wonder what this means for Drupal, so at DrupalCon Vienna, I tackled this head-on. My message was simple: AI is the storm, but it's also the way through it. Instead of fighting AI, we're leaning into it.
My keynote focused on how Drupal is evolving across four product areas. We're making it easier to get started with Site Templates, enabling visual site building through Drupal Canvas, accelerating development with AI assistance, and exploring complex workflows with new orchestration tools.
If you missed the keynote, you can watch the video below, or download my slides (62 MB).
Vienna felt like a turning point. People could see the pieces coming together. Drupal is finding its footing in the AI era, leading in AI innovation, and ready to help shape what comes next for the web.
Growing Drupal with Site TemplatesOne of the most important ways to grow Drupal is to make it easier and faster to build new sites. We began that work with Recipes, a way to quickly add common features to a site. Recipes help people go from idea to a website in hours instead of days.
At DrupalCon Vienna, I talked about the next step in that journey: our first Site Template. Site Templates build on Recipes and also include a complete design with layouts, visual style, and sample content. The result is that you can go from a new Drupal install to a fully working website in minutes. It will be the easiest way yet to get started with Drupal.
Next, we plan to introduce more Site Templates and launch a Site Template Marketplace where anyone can discover, share, and build on templates for different use cases.
A new visual editing experienceAt DrupalCon Vienna, the energy around Drupal Canvas was infectious. Some even called it "CanvasCon". Drupal Canvas sessions were often standing room only, just like the Drupal AI sessions.
I first showed an early version of Drupal Canvas at DrupalCon Barcelona in September 2024, when we launched Drupal's Starshot initiative. The progress we've made in just one year is remarkable. My keynote showed parts of Drupal Canvas in action, but for a deeper dive, I recommend watching this breakout session.
Version 1.0 of Drupal Canvas is scheduled for November 2025. Starting in January 2026, it will become the default page builder in Drupal CMS 2.0. After more than 15 months of development and countless contributors working to make Drupal easier for everyone, it's hard to believe we're almost there. This marks the beginning of a new chapter for how people create with Drupal.
What excites me most is what this solves. For years, building pages in Drupal required technical expertise. Drupal Canvas gives end-users a visual page builder that is both more powerful and easy to use. Plus, it supports React, which means front-end developers can contribute using skills they already have.
Drupal's accidental AI advantageEvery content management system faces defining moments. For Drupal, one came with the release of Drupal 8. We rebuilt Drupal from the ground up, adopting modern design patterns and improving configuration management, versioning, workflows, and more.
The transition was hard, but here is the surprising part: ten years later those decisions gave Drupal an unexpected advantage in today's AI-driven web. The architecture we created is exactly what AI systems need today. When AI modifies content, you need version control to roll back mistakes. When it builds pages, you need structured data, permissions, and workflows. Drupal already has those capabilities.
For years, Drupal prioritized flexibility and robustness while other platforms focused on ease of use. What once felt like extra complexity now makes perfect sense. Drupal has quietly become one of the most AI-ready platforms available.
AI is the storm, and the way through the storm
As I said in my keynote: "Some days AI terrifies me. An hour later it excites me. By the evening, I'm tired of hearing about it.". Still, we can't ignore AI.
I first introduced AI as part of Starshot. Five months ago, it became its own dedicated track with the launch of the Drupal AI initiative. Since then, twenty two agencies have backed it with funding and contributors, together contributing over one million dollars. This is the largest fundraising effort in Drupal's history.
The initiative is already producing impressive results. At DrupalCon Vienna, we released Drupal AI version 1.2, a major step forward for the initiative.
In my keynote, I also demonstrated three new AI capabilities:
Earlier this year, I wrote about the great digital agency unbundling. As AI automates more technical work, agencies need to evolve their business models and find new ways to create value.
One promising direction is orchestration: building systems and workflows that connect AI agents, content platforms, CRMs, and marketing tools into intelligent, automated workflows. I think of it as DXP 2.0.
Most organizations have complex marketing technology stacks. Connecting all the systems in their stack often requires custom code or repetitive manual tasks. This integration work can be time-consuming and hard to maintain.
Modern orchestration tools solve this by automating how information flows between systems. Instead of writing custom code, you can use no-code tools to define workflows that trigger automatically. When someone fills out a form, the system creates a CRM contact, sends a welcome email, and notifies your team without any manual work.
In my keynote, I showed how ECA and ActivePieces can work together. Jürgen Haas, who created ECA, and I collaborated on this integration. ECA lets you define automations inside Drupal using events, conditions, and actions. ActivePieces is an open source automation platform similar to Zapier or n8n.
This approach allows us to build user experiences that are not only better and smarter, but also positions Drupal to benefit from AI innovation happening across the broader ecosystem. The idea resonated in Vienna. People approached me enthusiastically with related projects and demos, including tools like Flowdrop or Drupal's MCP module.
Between now and DrupalCon Chicago, we're inviting the community to explore and expand on this work. Join us in #orchestration on Drupal Slack, test the new Orchestration module, connect more automation platforms, or help improve ECA. If this direction proves valuable, we'll share what we learned at DrupalCon Chicago.
Building the future togetherAt DrupalCon Vienna, I felt something shift. Sessions were packed. People were excited about Site Templates and the Marketplace. Drupal Canvas drew huge crowds, and even more agencies signed up to join the Drupal AI initiative. During contribution day, more people than usual showed up looking for ways to help.
That energy in Vienna reflected something bigger. AI is changing how people use the web and how we build for it. It can feel threatening, and it can feel full of possibility, but what became clear in Vienna is that Drupal is well positioned at this inflection point, with both momentum and direction.
What makes this moment special is how the community is responding with focus and collaboration. We are approaching it as a much more coordinated effort, while still leaving room for experimentation.
Vienna showed me that the Drupal community is ready to take this on together. We have navigated uncharted territory before, but this time there is a boldness and unity I have not seen in years. That is the way through the storm. I am proud to be part of it.
I want to extend my gratitude to everyone who contributed to making my presentation and demos a success. A special thank you to Adam G-H, Aidan Foster, ASH Sullivan, Bálint Kléri, Cristina Chumillas, Elliott Mower, Emma Horrell, Gábor Hojtsy, Gurwinder Antal, James Abrahams, Jurgen Haas, Kristen Pol, Lauri Eskola, Marcus Johansson, Martin Anderson-Clutz, Pamela Barone, Tiffany Farriss, Tim Lehnen, and Witze Van der Straeten. Many others contributed indirectly to make this possible. If I've inadvertently omitted anyone, please reach out.