![The hands of a developer at a keyboard summoning AI to create tools](/sites/default/files/styles/blog_hero_image_mobile/public/media/image/2026-06/VibeCodeTools.jpg?itok=Dy8Aqkn_) Image ![Martin Anderson-Clutz](/sites/default/files/styles/post_content_attribution_headshot/public/media/image/2024-04/Martin%20Anderson-Clutz-Teal.png?h=04d92ac6&itok=FR0HL2Zr) [Martin Anderson-Clutz](/people/acquians/martin-anderson-clutz) Senior Product Marketing Manager, Drupal Acquia ## Collection [Drupal](/blog/series/drupal) # Vibe Coding Drupal: Code Directing an Accelerator for Drupal 12 June 11, 2026 7 minute read [Share this blog post on LinkedIn ](https://www.linkedin.com/sharing/share-offsite/?url=https://www.acquia.com/markdownify/node/60751) [Share this blog post on Twitter ]() [Share this blog post via Email ]() Learn how "Code Directors" use AI to guide development, streamline Drupal contributions, and accelerate preparation for Drupal 12 ![The hands of a developer at a keyboard summoning AI to create tools](/sites/default/files/styles/blog_hero_image_mobile/public/media/image/2026-06/VibeCodeTools.jpg?itok=Dy8Aqkn_) ## Collection : [Drupal](/blog/series/drupal) # From Art Direction to Code Direction Before I started building websites, I was a graphic designer, eventually rising to roles like Art Director and Creative Director. I remember distinctly how expectations changed: as a designer, implementation was my responsibility; as an Art Director, my role shifted to overseeing specialists, providing a fresh set of eyes and guidance to make their work better. While the tools have evolved from QuarkXPress to Claude, the fundamental shift in authority and responsibility remains strikingly similar. As such, I'd like to propose a new term for those of us who use AI tools to soar to heights of software development we might not have thought possible: "Code Directors." Just as desktop publishing once allowed a single person to perform the work of an entire team of typesetters and paste-up artists, we’re seeing a parallel transformation in the software industry. Now, a single person with the right domain knowledge and AI tools can create entire applications in a fraction of the time it once took a team of engineers. Top AI labs now report that [100% of their code is AI-generated](https://finance.yahoo.com/news/top-engineers-anthropic-openai-ai-194731072.html), and industry leaders are [shifting from writing prompts to "writing loops](https://thenewstack.io/loop-engineering/)." For myself, I’ve found in recent weeks that using AI tools has allowed me to achieve things I wouldn’t have thought to undertake before. Although I'm still very much on the climb of my own learning curve, it's starting to settle into a rhythm. Working with AI tools is starting to feel like being an Art Director used to: I communicate what I want to achieve, wait for the rough structure, and then provide points of guidance to align the direction with my vision. As the solution takes shape, I look over the code, but I’m typically more concerned about the overall approach than the specific lines of code. There is, of course, no replacement for testing; often, my original vision is so quickly realized that I can push past the "MVP" and add "nice-to-haves." Working with AI feels less like "engineering" and more like providing direction. I'm not suggesting that titles like "Engineering Director" or "Tech Lead" will disappear. But in the same way an Art Director provides vision rather than just management, a Code Director provides direction to an AI agent (or even a swarm of agents) to ensure the right thing is taking shape in the right way, and that critical standards are met. This role leans into the idea of someone who provides direction more so than what we commonly think of as a "director" in modern organizational charts. However, we must learn from the desktop publishing revolution, which sometimes resulted in a general lowering of standards. The true test of a Code Director isn't just the speed of delivery, but the ability to enforce rigorous standards that AI might otherwise overlook. In the Drupal community, we have robust coding standards validated by tools like phpcs and eslint, and we are fortunate to have the [AI Best Practices for Drupal](https://www.drupal.org/project/ai_best_practices) project as a central gathering place for our collective expertise. The Code Directors of the future will find that they are indeed leading a sizable team, even if many of those doing the grunt work are AI agents. If we lay the groundwork now, we won't have to lament the loss of expertise it took to get us here. While the Code Director role sounds conceptual, you can see it in action when you get to work vibe-coding Drupal contribution. ## Intelligent Creation of Deterministic Tools In [a previous post](https://www.acquia.com/blog/two-speeds-agentic-web-pragmatism-and-community-driven-acceleration), I shared one of my takeaways from the recent apidays conference in NYC: There are often advantages to using deterministic tools where they can solve the same problem. In particular, they tend to be cheaper, faster, and more reliable. I’ve also observed that a big advantage of AI is that it takes away many of the common excuses for not following best practices. For example, I will come clean and confess that some of my contrib projects don’t have the automated test coverage they deserve. This is an ideal task for AI agents, however, and you can even use one agent to write the tests, and then (after confirming the tests pass), get a different one to examine the test suite and suggest improvements. In some of my early exploration of AI tools, I also observed the significant advantages of having testing tools available in your local environment. That’s true for any Drupal development, of course, and can be particularly useful for contrib projects, if you can anticipate issues that will be identified by the GitLab CI pipelines in a fraction of the time. During that initial testing, I had tools available thanks to the excellent [DDEV Drupal Contrib](https://github.com/ddev/ddev-drupal-contrib) add-on. That alone proved to be a massive help, and it was actually a good fit for that use case: working on a single module. More typically, however, I tend to work on multiple contrib projects in a single environment, so the add-on proved to be a little too opinionated for the way I like to work. I initially experimented with a fork of DDEV Drupal Contrib, but after some discussion with one of the maintainers of that module, I was encouraged to create a new add-on from scratch. Until recently, I had never even used a DDEV add-on, so creating a new one from scratch seemed daunting. Fortunately, I had AI to help. With a little direction, the initial structure was roughed out. To get the commands for each check working, I tested them and provided the agent with the error output I was seeing, and some additional improvements that would make this new add-on more intuitive to use. As I started to see patterns in what needed to be fixed in multiple patterns, I asked the AI to summarize those common fixes in a local Markdown file I could reuse to accelerate the process. Soon, I had working versions of all the commands to locally run the code validation checks in the GitLab CI Template, so I shared a link to [the new add-on](https://github.com/mandclu/ddev-module-developer) with some members of the Drupal community. Some very useful feedback came back, and even the first [Pull Request](https://github.com/mandclu/ddev-module-developer/pull/1). Thanks to the feedback, the add-on now has significantly better code coverage, can handle absolute host paths, and there also a single “checks” command that is designed to run all the checks in the Drupal GitLab CI pipelines, including honoring any project-specific configuration in .gitllab-ci.yml or other job-specific local configuration files. In short, thanks to the flexible architecture of DDEV, feedback from the Drupal community, and my intelligent coding tools, I now have the exact set of tools I’ve been wanting for years. And it’s timely too. ## Drupal 12 is Coming Drupal core [11.4.0-beta1](https://www.drupal.org/project/drupal/releases/11.4.0-beta1) was released on June 3, and we just saw the release of [11.4.0-rc1](https://www.drupal.org/project/drupal/releases/11.4.0-rc1). That has also meant that the deprecations for Drupal core 12.0 are a known quantity now, so [Björn Brala (bbrala)](https://www.drupal.org/u/bbrala) recently started running the [freshly updated Project Update Bot](https://www.drupal.org/about/core/blog/the-project-update-bot-is-refreshed-for-drupal-12-readiness-with-over-80-automated-coverage-for). That bot meticulously iterates through the tens of thousands of free contributed project available on [drupal.org](http://drupal.org). Maintainers like me will see our inboxes filling up with notifications that the code changes needed to get our projects ready for Drupal 12. Often they can be merged in without much effort, and there’s reason to hope that will be even more true for Drupal 12, but I’m grateful to have local tools that will keep me working at maximum efficiency if a few need extra attention. That said, in a few days I will hopping on [a webinar](https://www.acquia.com/events/webinars/drupal-114-here-your-roadmap-drupal-12-and-how-get-ready) with the Drupal Association’s [Tim Lehnen (hestenet)](https://www.drupal.org/u/hestenet) to talk about what’s new in Drupal 11.4.0, what’s coming in Drupal 12, and some things you can start doing now to be ready when that next major version drops later this year. I hope you’ll join us! Image ![Martin Anderson-Clutz](/sites/default/files/styles/post_content_attribution_headshot/public/media/image/2024-04/Martin%20Anderson-Clutz-Teal.png?h=04d92ac6&itok=FR0HL2Zr) [Martin Anderson-Clutz](/people/acquians/martin-anderson-clutz) Senior Product Marketing Manager, Drupal Acquia [Share this blog post on LinkedIn ](https://www.linkedin.com/sharing/share-offsite/?url=https://www.acquia.com/markdownify/node/60751) [Share this blog post on Twitter ]() [Share this blog post via Email ]() ## Keep Reading [View More Resources](/resources) [Image ![A person at a keyboard, using AI to channel their inspiration into Drupal](/sites/default/files/styles/card_tablet/public/media/image/2026-05/Gemini_Generated_Image_cj5ooocj5ooocj5o.png?h=d1908cb8&itok=veLLgaI5) Blog Article 9 min ###### Vibe Coding Drupal: My Initial Foray Insights on AI's potential for Drupal: How AI tools like Claude and Codex accelerated the creation of a new Drupal module, "Canvas Field Component." Drupal ](/blog/vibe-coding-drupal-my-initial-foray) [Image ![A futuristic Drupal contributor working in an AI-enhanced IDE](/sites/default/files/styles/card_tablet/public/media/image/2026-05/Gemini_Generated_Image_t433ugt433ugt433.png?h=d1908cb8&itok=vm3O3P8Y) Blog Article 11 min ###### Vibe Coding Drupal: the Scent of Progress AI wrote a Drupal module. Discover why "directed coding," using IDE tools, and human oversight are essential to avoid the "scent of progress" trap. Drupal ](/blog/vibe-coding-drupal-scent-progress) [Image ![](/sites/default/files/media/image/2025-09/Webinar%20Background-Drupal%20Association.svg) Webinar June 17, 2026 ###### Get Ready for Drupal 12: Upgrade Tools and New Features Drupal 12 is coming. Learn how to prepare your upgrade path, use AI-assisted tools, and adopt new core features — live on June 17. ](/events/webinars/drupal-114-here-your-roadmap-drupal-12-and-how-get-ready)