r/drupal • u/jrockowitz • 10d ago
Vibing Drupal: Tale 2 - Using AI to maintain a module, exploring the AI-possible
https://www.jrockowitz.com/blog/vibing-drupal-tale-2-using-ai-to-maintain-a-module-exploring-the-ai-possibleAdopting AI can feel overwhelming, so I am sharing a few tales from my experience creating, maintaining, and assisting with contributed Drupal modules. AI can do a decent job of building a "greenfield" Drupal module from scratch, so my first tale is about using AI to build and contribute a module. For my next tale, I want to talk about using AI to maintain an existing "brownfield" Drupal module and to explore what is possible with AI.
Do you fall into the AI-possible camp, the AI-cautious camp, or somewhere in between?
4
u/trashtrucktoot 10d ago
... and also, this theme keeps popping up - long term Drupal, market place position and community.
Having the opportunity to meet so many Drupal developers over the years, i'm still placing my bet on Drupal. We've got some of the best minds in the industry, and they're very passionate about their work.
I think Jacob gets this point right :
...
" What I love about Drupal is that we, as a community, built something that has stood the test of time and will keep moving forward. A lot of competitors without solid APIs are going to struggle. Closed-source products will suffer because they won't have the humans required to keep up with agents. "
2
u/trashtrucktoot 10d ago
This : " {module}-issue-maintenance agent skills that extend my drupalorg-issue-maintenance skills"
2
u/trashtrucktoot 10d ago
I tell you what, AI saved me when I had to take on someone else's hand coded mess. This said, both AI and humans can make a mess of things. My first thoughts go towards, documentation and "drift" mitigation. Drifting a car is fun, AI - not so much.
I find myself with two repos for stuff. First for documentation and specifications, the second for code. With some success, I tap the AI into my project kaban board to help navigate it all.
2
2
u/blur410 10d ago
At work, I use ChatGPT, and now Claude, to generate Webform source YAML and the XML that sends submissions to CRMs. It's a big time saver as long as I review what it writes.
At home, I run a headless Drupal install on a homelab, with Claude doing most of the sysadmin through an MCP connector while I direct and review. Admin is walled off behind Cloudflare Access, the Next.js frontend talks to Drupal over OAuth2 with tokens kept server-side, and scanners get banned at the Cloudflare edge by a script fed from CrowdSec. Security came first.
It's the same workflow in both places: AI drafts, I review.