UI Suite Monthly #34 — Pushing Toward Core: Design Tokens, AI Workflows, and Display Builder's Road to RC1

Overall Summary

Our 34th monthly meeting brought together a smaller-than-usual but engaged group of contributors to review the state of the UI Suite ecosystem. With Drupal's core freeze just six weeks away, we focused on what it takes to get our APIs — Style API, Design Tokens, and Icon API — across the finish line for Drupal 11.1 or 11.4. We also reviewed the rapid cadence of Display Builder beta releases, celebrated impressive adoption numbers for UI Icons, and opened an exciting conversation about AI agent integration with our UI Pattern suite. The session closed with a deep-dive discussion on how Display Builder can eventually work alongside or replace Paragraphs-based workflows for site builders.

Key Topics Discussed

Core Inclusion Push — Style API, Design Tokens, and More

Our community has a dual mission: proposing the missing YAML formats and plugin definitions needed to implement design system features in Drupal core, and connecting those definitions to the Drupal API through contributed modules. Right now, the clock is ticking — the Drupal code freeze is about one month and a half away.

• Style API is currently in review and progressing well after an earlier round of feedback last year.
• Design Token access variables still need some work, but the team is optimistic.
• SDC schema references migration is planned for Drupal 11.3 core, which will simplify how UI Patterns 2 references component schemas and open new opportunities for standalone component definitions.
• One particularly ambitious task generating excitement at DrupalCon Chicago is defining form elements from SDC — we'll go deeper on this topic next month.

UI Patterns 2 — Stable, But Migration Adoption Lags

Mikael Meulle confirmed that UI Patterns 2 has reached a stable state, with the last minor release issued on March 5th. We are now seeing roughly 100 new websites registered per week, which is a healthy signal of adoption. However, the data tells a nuanced story: many of those adopters are discovering UI Patterns for the first time, while a significant portion of existing UI Patterns 1 users have not yet migrated to version 2. The migration path is well-documented, helpers like ui_patterns_legacy and Drush commands are available, and the team has seen it work smoothly in production contexts. If you're still on 1.x, now is a good time to move.

There is also a compatibility challenge with the Canvas module, as both projects make conflicting changes to the component plugin manager. Reaching compatibility at that level is our top priority, and we're hopeful both teams can find common ground in the coming months.

Display Builder — Rapid Betas, Clear Roadmap to RC1

Since our last meeting, we shipped Beta 2, 3, and 4, and Beta 5 is expected in April. Our release philosophy is to ship frequently with smaller, focused changes rather than waiting for larger jumps. Notable recent additions include:

• Full migration from Layout Builder, including content override support.
• Initialization of new page layouts from existing Block Layout configurations.
• Meaningful first log messages when starting a new display — a small quality-of-life feature that makes a real difference when managing many displays.

The road to RC1 is long but clearly mapped: API stability, unit and kernel test coverage (with strong contributions from Jean), and symmetric translation as the final major feature scoped for Beta 6. Symmetric translation will be delivered in four steps, including a move to SQL storage and adoption of Drupal's standard revision log interface — changes that will require breaking the storage of "instance entities" (drafts) in Beta 5 and possibly Beta 6.

One important commitment we want to reiterate: we will not break your configuration or published content. Drafts and unpublished instance entities are volatile and will be affected, but everything saved and published remains safe.

Display Builder is also intentionally front-end friendly. You do not need to adapt your SDC components to be compatible with Display Builder — we adapt to what your theme provides, not the other way around. This is a core design principle we are committed to upholding across the entire UI Suite.

UI Icons — A Success Story Driven by Drupal CMS

UI Icons continues to grow impressively, gaining 2,000 new installs since our last meeting. Of the roughly 3,400 Drupal CMS 2 installations tracked on drupal.org, 60% include UI Icons as a dependency — a strong indicator of our module's role in the Drupal CMS ecosystem. Our goal is to move the Icon API to Drupal core for Drupal 11.4, adopting the W3C Design Token Community Group format to enable a fully automated design workflow: tokens exported from Figma, committed by front-end developers, loaded by Drupal, overridden by site builders, and serialized for the browser. This is the kind of end-to-end automation our community has been working toward.

AI Agent Integration — An Emerging Opportunity

Rajab Natshah shared an exciting perspective on how our current architecture positions us well for AI-assisted workflows. Because our UI schemas are rich, structured, and comprehensive — covering things like remote video that competing systems lack — AI agents can more reliably understand and act on Drupal's design context. The automated design workflow we are building is already well-suited for agent integration.

The conversation surfaced a concrete proposal: adding an agent.md file to all our projects to give AI tools the context they need. We agreed to schedule a dedicated follow-up discussion in April to work through implementation steps, and Rajab will prepare an operational starter template to present at our next monthly meeting.

Paragraphs and Display Builder — Finding the Right Integration Path

Ben M. raised a practical question many site builders will relate to: how does Display Builder fit with an existing Paragraphs-based content structure? Pierre outlined two current paths — keeping Paragraphs for contributors while using Display Builder only for display configuration, or fully replacing Paragraphs with Display Builder once a Display Builder Lock feature is available (largely implemented, pending a recent core merge). A third and most desirable option — positioning existing Paragraphs within a Display Builder layout — has not yet been started due to the complexities of referencing content entities from config entities, but it is clearly the direction the community wants to move toward.

Key Action Points

The meeting closed with a clear set of next steps for the team. The most pressing items are around communication, AI experimentation, and keeping our community engaged:

• Share the DrupalCon Chicago talk video (Display Builder + HTMX) once it is available online — Pierre committed to circulating the link as soon as it is ready.
• Request AI documentation from Mikael — Pierre will follow up to obtain a starting documentation resource related to AI agent integration with our modules, so the broader team can onboard more easily.
• Schedule an April AI discussion between Rajab Natshah and Pierre to plan out the concrete steps for AI agent integration before the next monthly meeting. This working session will lay the groundwork for a more formal presentation to the group.
• Prepare an operational AI starter template — Rajab Natshah will put together a ready-to-use template demonstrating how AI agents can interact with the UI Suite. This will be presented at our May monthly meeting so contributors can start experimenting.
• Add agent.md to all projects — As a first practical step, we should add an agent context file to each of our repositories to help AI tools understand each module's purpose and schema.
• Add cool demos to the next monthly agenda — Pierre committed to including live demonstrations of recent features at the May meeting. No demos this month meant some attendees left without a concrete visual sense of what is new, and we want to correct that.

Upcoming Deadlines / Releases

Want to get involved? Join us on Slack in the #ui-suite-initiative channel, pick up an issue on any of our modules, or come say hello at one of our upcoming events. Every contribution counts — even a few days of your time makes a difference.