Jacob Rockowitz

Drupal (AI) Playground: AI is making great programmers even greater, and not-so-great programmers, well, not-so-great

Tue, 09 Jun 2026 11:26:24 -0700

Implications

This post has broader implications for software development beyond the Drupal community, but I feel fortunate to be part of an open source community that can lead the way in addressing the widening productivity gap among its contributors and maintainers.

The title of this post is meant to draw you in by highlighting a problem, but my goal is to get us thinking about a solution. I realize the term "not-so-great" may sound negative when describing a developer, but this comparison bluntly highlights a major problem developers and communities face when working with AI. The truth is, I have never met a "not-so-great" developer in the Drupal community because people are engaged and curious about the software we build.

Realization

My realization is that "AI is making great programmers even greater and not-so-great programmers, well, not-so-great."

For me, a "not-so-great" programmer is someone who writes code like a factory worker. The difference between a "not-so-great" programmer and a beginner is curiosity. Curiosity is the secret to being successful with AI. A curious beginner can easily accelerate their learning experience with AI. Anyone with curiosity can move from beginner to novice in a matter of hours with AI.

Everyone agrees that AI can be a force/capability multiplier, ranging from 2x to more than 10x. The reality is that some people are simply unable to leverage AI and have a 1x multiplier. Very experienced developers report they can now accomplish tasks that would have taken months in days or even hours. Observations suggest that the more capable someone is, the more effectively they can leverage AI.

Let's say we were rating programmers on a scale of 1 to 10, using a system similar to a chess rating system, with 1 being a beginner, 10 being a legendary programmer (aka a super grandmaster in chess), and 5 being an...Read More

Drupal (AI) Playground: AIs are eating our websites, and we need to adapt.

Wed, 20 May 2026 07:47:58 -0700

Recently, I contributed an AI-powered Schema.org JSON-LD module to Drupal that uses AI automators to generate Schema.org JSON-LD, building a knowledge graph that improves SEO/AEO by making it easier for machines to understand your website. The module was built with AI in 4 days, whereas the Schema.org Blueprints module with a similar goal took 4 years. I have been so shocked by how efficiently AI can code and build software that I realized, "AI ate my work, and I need to be okay with that." I wrote about how I am adjusting to this new "AI" normal.

A slightly different reckoning is unfolding for our websites because AI is consuming our content, thereby reducing traffic. Providing Schema.org JSON-LD is one way to feed the machines. AIs are becoming the front page of most websites. To adapt to this new "AI" normal, where an AI is the gatekeeper to your website, we need to evolve our approach to building and managing our websites.

Adaptation

Personally, "adaptation" feels like the right word to describe the challenge and change we, developers, site builders, managers, and owners, are facing right now. Adaptation is forced upon us by external constraints or opportunities, depending on your point of view, to evolve our approach to building and sharing information. There is a much larger discussion about the impact of AI on who we are, what we are building, and how we build. For now, I want to focus on what Drupal-built websites need to consider to adapt and keep up with the rapidly evolving digital landscape, which is largely out of our control.

Out of our control

How AIs are consuming our websites is out of our control. If you look back at how websites continually bent and tweaked to get a bump in page ranking, implementing now-defunct things like AMP (Accelerated Mobile Pages) because Google told us to,...Read More

Drupal (AI) Playground: AI ate my work, and I need to be okay with that.

Tue, 12 May 2026 06:26:47 -0700

AI ate my work

I've been experimenting with using AI to build Drupal modules for the past few months. Two weeks ago, I released a module called the AI Schema.org JSON-LD module and wrote a blog post about it. The module essentially replaces the primary outcome of my Schema.org Blueprints module, which is to enhance SEO by providing high-quality Schema.org JSON-LD markup. The AI Schema.org JSON-LD module generates Schema.org JSON-LD by having contrib modules work together to call an AI provider with a simple prompt.

This simple module, which I built in four days, supersedes my work on the Schema.org Blueprints module, which I've been working on for four years. I could resent the fact that this new AI-powered module, created using AI, was replacing me and my work, but instead, it's just changing how I view the work I'm doing.

With AI, it's easier for me to explore new ideas and take on more ambitious tasks, while knowing that the code and modules I'm creating remain flexible and extendable by humans and machines. There's a fine line between feeling like AI is eating our work, replacing it, consuming it, or improving it. We should talk about it.

What does AI mean for me?

The most immediate thing I have to think about is how I took something I had previously built, saw how AI could replace it, and had to be open to recognizing the opportunity that AI could do things differently, better, and faster. Everyone needs to lean into that reality with AI: things can get done faster and with more possibilities.

It took me a while to realize that things had changed. I built a few very simple modules to understand how AI coding agents plan, document, build, test, and maintain code. After a few weeks, I began to see the...Read More

Drupal (AI) Playground: Using the AI Schema.org JSON-LD module to "feed the machines"

Wed, 29 Apr 2026 07:46:32 -0700

Preamble

I've been discussing and committed to a Schema.org-first approach to building content models in Drupal for several years. Along the way, someone described Schema.org as "food for machines."

Originally, for Schema.org "machines" meant search engines; now it definitely means AIs and LLMs. Defining and generating accurate, well-structured Schema.org JSON-LD for a website is challenging and often treated as an afterthought. Even if you use my Schema.org Blueprints to create a Schema.org-first content model, it still requires significant work to set up and maintain.

AI can analyze vast amounts of information and provide instant answers to complex questions, or complete challenging tasks within minutes. Last year, I began to see how one could prompt an AI to recommend the ideal Schema.org JSON-LD markup by providing URLs to example content and linking to the appropriate Schema.org types and properties. Keep in mind that the LLMs behind AIs understand every public webpage and actively examine every piece of Schema.org markup on the web.

This realization led me to the notion that in Drupal, we can leverage our existing AI modules and tools to have AIs generate Schema.org JSON-LD markup for content with as little as a well-thought-out prompt.

Before I introduce you to my AI Schema.org JSON-LD module, three things need to be stated immediately and will be addressed in this post and a follow-up.

The remainder of this post is directly copied from the module's project page, with the understanding that additional posts are needed to cover the implications of this module for developers, such as myself, and for site builders and owners.

About this module

The AI Schema.org JSON-LD module provides a...Read More

Drupal (AI) Playground: Training and practicing building a module using AI

Tue, 21 Apr 2026 05:59:54 -0700

Successes and failures

I am continually experiencing both successes and failures while playing in my Drupal (AI) playground. My failures usually come from expecting too much of an AI, especially when I ask it to do too many things in a single prompt. My successes with AI come when I keep things useful, simple, and achievable.

Building something useful, simple, and achievable with AI

As I've learned about and maintained new ecosystems in Drupal, I like to review all available plugins. For the Webform module, I created reports for elements, handlers, variants, and exporters. For ECA, I developed an ECA Report module. For the Meta Tag module, I contributed a patch to get a Meta Tag plugin report committed. I think having a way to browse a module's or ecosystem's plugins helps developers understand what tools are available. A Drush command for exporting plugin definitions could be used by both humans and AI.

In the past, creating and maintaining a report could be time-consuming. The new reality is that AI makes it easier to build and maintain simple things like reports. One of the most common anecdotes I hear from non-technical people who "vibe code" is that they are building websites or reports to display information.

My goal was to create a report that lists all plugin managers, plugin definitions, and individual plugin details.

There ain’t nothing fancy here

The Plugin Report module I created with AI is nothing special. Claude Code’s only challenge was getting the PHP introspection code to pass PHPStan’s level 6 coding standards. In many ways, this module served as an exercise to reinforce my ability to guide an AI in the right direction. My biggest...Read More

Drupal (AI) Playground: Adding more structures to my playground

Mon, 13 Apr 2026 03:23:24 -0700

Building new modules using AI

I am setting up a playground to experiment with AI. My last post discussed developing and contributing a new Entity/Field Labels module to Drupal using AI. I look forward to seeing what I can create next. Before moving forward, I want to pause and explore how AI can assist me in managing and maintaining my existing contributed modules.

Maintaining my contributed modules using AI

Over the past decade, I’ve created and managed numerous contributed modules. I'm not sure how many there are, and it's been challenging to keep them all up to date. In the long run, I believe an AI agent with the right skills could help me manage my overwhelming list of modules. First, I need to clone my modules into my local development environment.

Cloning my contributed modules via Composer

It's unrealistic for me to manually clone each module's repository. Fortunately, Composer supports Git repositories. However, setting up and testing each module's Git repository using Composer can still be very time-consuming. Since AI excels at repetitive, predictable tasks, this is a perfect opportunity for me to let my AI assistant step in and make my life easier.

Using Agent skills to make things easier

Since cloning a Drupal repository for local development is quite straightforward, this presents a great opportunity to develop a custom agent skill. As with many AI-related tasks, it's best to seek help from the AI. Therefore, I prompted Claude to assist me in planning my drupalorg-project-clone skill.

Here is the front matter description of my new drupalorg-project-clone skill, which was generated by Claude Code and Codex.

Adding a dozen repositories to one's composer.json file makes it harder for humans to review dependencies....Read More

Drupal (AI) Playground: Building a Module

Mon, 30 Mar 2026 06:22:55 -0700

Falling in the playground

Using the metaphor of a playground for my AI Drupal development environment now feels completely fitting, based on my experience building a module using AI. Good playgrounds have a variety of structures that challenge kids of different ages and confidence levels, helping them develop their physical and social skills.

For example, most kids don't just run into a playground and immediately climb to the top of the monkey bars as their first move; yes, some daredevils will go straight there, and foolish ones will cry for help if they get stuck. My specific playground experience with AI was learning how to fall, get up, and try again. My obstacle was building a module using Claude Code. Similar to kids trying their first climb on the monkey bars, they expect to reach the top effortlessly, but as they climb, they face reality, their hands get sweaty, and they look down.

Unrealistic expectations

I had glorious expectations for my experience building a fairly complex module with Claude Code. I assumed that a fully documented module specification plan would guide Claude in creating a working solution.

Personally, I am not very skilled at writing requirements, specifications, and documentation. At best, I excel at writing self-documenting code, which is somewhat of a cop-out. For me, having a complete plan in place before starting implementation feels like a refreshing change. Creating better plans for AI coding agents will help me become a better mentor to humans.

Prompting a comprehensive plan

I wrote my module specification using Claude Chat. In my previous post about experimenting with agent skills, I shared an example module...Read More

Drupal (AI) Playground: Balancing with Skills

Thu, 26 Mar 2026 09:04:08 -0700

I'm trying here…

I got Claude to help me set up my Drupal (AI) Playground using Drupal Recipes. Claude is also writing my /docs and generating the project's CLAUDE.md (also known as an AGENTS.md) file. My exploration uses a variation of the crawl-walk-run approach to learning to use Claude Code.

At this point in my journey, running feels a little out of reach, which I am okay with because Agentic coding is a major software development paradigm shift. I'm eager to run and have Claude generate some 'production' and reviewable quality code for me. Still, when researching CLAUDE.md files, people recommend using or creating skills that simply offer reusable instructions to guide a prompt in the right direction. Installing some Drupal-specific skills should increase Claude's reliability when working with Drupal.

Still unsure what I'm doing here

I'm not sure what I'm doing here and am always seeking advice. The suggestions on Reddit range from adding agent skills and plugins to give Claude superpowers to the idea that Claude is already superpowered and doesn't need much help.

I'm skeptical about how much nudging Claude really needs when using skills. For example, I have been using Claude's Chat to plan a module without any additional context or information, and Claude is doing an excellent job generating a 'simple' module project specification. Claude fully understands Drupal APIs and some Drupalisms, but AIs are known to make mistakes; therefore, exploring skills is worthwhile and helpful for repetitive custom tasks, such as upgrading or refactoring codebases.

Ask the AI for help getting started

At this point in my AI journey, I'm between asking Claude to generate documentation and searching Google for references to include. I value that all my /docs have become iterative with AI, and I'm very optimistic...Read More

Drupal (AI) Playground: Walking with AGENTS.md

Fri, 20 Mar 2026 03:47:55 -0700

Creating some rules for my playground

I'm setting up my Drupal Playground to experiment with AI coding agents. My previous post was about using Claude Code to establish a Drupal environment, and it felt a bit like crawling, but now I am ready to pick up the pace.

I've experimented and found that, in addition to sending effective code-generation prompts to an AI, providing metadata about the targeted codebase is equally important. The standard way to give this context is AGENTS.md. My initial experiments with Amazee.io's AGENTS.md produced much better results with PHPStorm's Junie. I'm inclined to think that Drupal core should include an AGENTS.md file or template.

Meanwhile, I've been experimenting with Claude's Chat UI without any context beyond knowing I am a Drupal developer. Despite this, Claude, with no background information, shows an impressive understanding of Drupal's API and developer workflow. For example, Claude can plan and develop an entire module, including automated tests. I look forward to seeing Claude attempt to build a Telephone Filter module, based on the one I created with ChatGPT a year ago. For now, I plan to continue setting up my environment to give Claude Code the necessary context to produce the most reliable results.

Adding context via CLAUDE.md (aka AGENTS.md)

Currently, Claude Code uses CLAUDE.md files for context, but it will likely support AGENTS.md. In short, CLAUDE.md and AGENTS.md are the same. I haven't extensively experimented with other AIs yet, but the fact that Claude Code has an...Read More

Drupal (AI) Playground: Crawling with Recipes

Mon, 16 Mar 2026 05:15:31 -0700

Incorporating AI into my development workflow

I've just begun exploring how to incorporate AI into my development workflow to tackle ongoing challenges for my client. Drupal's AI initiative is progressing rapidly with continuous updates and improvements. At DrupalCon Chicago, there will be numerous discussions about the future of AI in Drupal.

At the same time, through various channels like the Talking Drupal podcast and Planet Drupal feeds, we are hearing about people achieving significant success with AI-driven development using coding agents such as Claude Code. There is understandable hesitation within the Drupal community about adopting AI. Additionally, there is a lot of buzz and hype around AI replacing traditional software development.

Personally, I cut through the hype to find the clear truths about AI. I am specifically listening to what senior engineers like Steve Yegge, Kent Beck, and Martin Fowler say about the future of AI, software, and software development. I recently found "The Pragmatic Engineer" podcast, which, for me, is the best place to get genuine, honest, and tangible insights into the future of AI-driven development.

Adapting and adopting AI-driven development

My personal conclusion is that, for better or worse, AI-driven development is something individuals, teams, companies, and communities need to adapt to and adopt. For me, the starting point is setting up a local Drupal...Read More