Articles

<a target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer" href="https://cmscritic.com/critics/scottliewehr">Scott Liewehr</a><a target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer" href="https://cmscritic.com/critics/dan-drapeau"> </a>is Global Vice President of Market Strategy &amp; Growth at <a target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer" href="https://cmscritic.com/products/sitecore">Sitecore</a> and a CMS Critic contributor. <hr /> In my <a target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer" href="https://cmscritic.com/youre-writing-for-the-wrong-audience">last piece for CMS Critic</a>, I introduced the H2A→A2H framework and argued that the audience for your content has fundamentally changed now that LLMs are in the mix. AI now sits on both sides of the equation: one AI helps you create, and a second AI decides whether your brand shows up at all. If you haven’t read it, the short version is this: you’re writing for the wrong audience, and the invisible editor (the LLM) that mediates between your brand and your buyer rewards substance, structure, authority, and specificity, and ignores everything else.This piece is about what happens next. Specifically, it’s about one of the most sacred practices in digital marketing and why I think it’s about to collapse under the weight of its own logic.I’m talking about A/B testing.Here’s the argument: if the primary consumer of your content is now an LLM, why are you still testing it on humans?<h3 id="you’re-optimizing-for-the-wrong-audience">You’re optimizing for the wrong audience</h3>The entire experimentation infrastructure that marketing has built over the past 15 years assumes that human behavior is the metric that matters. You publish multiple versions of a page, split your traffic, measure which one earns more clicks, more time on page, more conversions. The humans tell you which version wins.That makes perfect sense in a human-to-human world, when a human creates content and another human consumes it. It even makes sense in an H2A2H world, where AI helps the marketer create or scale the content, but the audience is still human. But in an H2A→A2H world, where an LLM is deciding whether your content even reaches the human on the other end, you’ve got a measurement problem. You’re measuring human reactions to determine what works, but the LLM is the one separating signal from noise before any human sees it.Think about it this way. When a buyer asks an LLM to recommend a product, the model assembles an answer by evaluating sources across a range of factors, including the substance, structure, authority, and specificity of your brand content. It decides which brands to cite and which to ignore. If your brand doesn’t pass that filter, no human ever sees it. It doesn’t matter which headline variant tested better with your website visitors if the invisible editor never selected your brand in the first place.The experimentation question has to change. The old question was: which version does my human audience prefer? The new question is: which version does the invisible editor cite, and does it carry my brand position faithfully when synthesized into an answer? Those are fundamentally different questions, and traditional A/B testing was never designed to ask the second one.I said in my last article that in an H2A→A2H reality, the list doesn’t exist. There is only one single, synthesized answer. If you’re still optimizing for a list by testing on the humans reading it, you’re solving last decade’s problem.<h3 id="the-opportunity-cost-nobody-talks-about">The opportunity cost nobody talks about</h3>There’s a secondary argument here that I think is worth sitting with.When you build three versions of a landing page for multivariate testing, you believe in all three. The test is how you discover which performs best. But the discovery comes at a cost: two-thirds of your audience bounces, fails to convert, or disengages entirely. Those are missed opportunities; real prospects who encountered the weaker versions and moved on. The learning is valuable, but the tuition of missed pipeline is expensive.That cost would be easier to absorb if the learning were quick. A/B and multivariate testing demand statistical significance, which demands large sample sizes. For brands with massive traffic, this can happen reasonably quickly. But for the mid-market company with 15,000 monthly visitors? Running a rigorous test is a struggle. The sample sizes are too small, the test duration stretches into weeks or months, and by the time you have a statistically valid result, the market context may have shifted. For a meaningful number of brands, traditional experimentation has always been more aspirational than practical, and those brands that can’t reach significance are left guessing. The opportunity cost compounds on both ends. Large-audience brands pay a “learning tax” across a lot of visitors. Small-audience brands can’t afford to run the test at all. Neither situation is great, and both are artifacts of a model that requires real people as its crash-test dummies.In an AI-native model, both problems disappear. You generate hundreds of content variations using AI, then test every one against thousands of simulated buyer personas – AI agents that behave like real buyers with real intent, real objections, and real decision criteria – before a single real person ever sees any of it. The AI generates. The AI evaluates. The AI selects. And your entire audience gets the optimal version from the first impression.No humans interacted with the underperforming version. The mid-market brand with limited traffic runs the same caliber of test as the enterprise with millions of visitors. The learning happened upstream, in simulation, at machine speed, and prior to publishing.The experimentation paradigm inverts: you’re testing for your audience, not on them.<h3 id="the-assumption-that-needs-rethinking">The assumption that needs rethinking</h3>At this point, a reasonable marketer might think: “Okay, but don’t I still need experimentation infrastructure to evaluate all those variations? You’ve moved the testing upstream, but someone still has to figure out which version wins.”It’s a fair instinct, and it’s rooted in how we’ve thought about experimentation for years. But I think it reflects an assumption that doesn’t hold in an AI-native workflow.When the AI system that generated 200 variations can also evaluate them against simulated buyer personas, score them for likely performance, and select the winner, the “experimentation” has collapsed into the content intelligence layer itself. It’s a function of the orchestration system. The evaluation capability has been absorbed into an intelligent platform that does more. You don’t need a standalone experimentation product sitting between your CMS and your audience when the intelligence that created the content can also judge it.There’s also a scope issue. Traditional experimentation asks a narrow question: Which version gets more clicks, more conversions, more engagement? Those are optimization questions within a fixed frame. The AI-native model lets you question the frame itself. You can ask: Does this content earn citations from the invisible editor? Does it hold up when a buyer asks a follow-up question and the AI goes back to the well? Does it carry my brand position faithfully across different query contexts?That’s a different category of evaluation entirely, and it requires content intelligence, not experimentation tooling.<h3 id="what-this-means-practically">What this means practically</h3>If you’re running a traditional experimentation program today, I’m not suggesting you shut it off tomorrow. There’s still value in testing live experiences for behavioral signals that simulated personas can’t fully replicate, at least for now. Human beings are unpredictable (I have teenagers; I can confirm this), and the gap between simulated behavior and real behavior is still real.But the trajectory is clear, and the planning window is shorter than you might think. Here’s where I’d focus:<ul><li>Start running parallel tracks. Keep your live experimentation program, but begin building the capability to pre-test content against AI personas before publication. Measure the delta between what your simulated testing predicts and what your live tests confirm. As that delta shrinks, and it will, you’ll have the evidence to shift investment.</li><li>Start evaluating your content against AI consumption metrics alongside human engagement metrics. Your experimentation program should be measuring whether your content earns citations from LLMs, whether it surfaces in synthesized answers, whether your brand position survives the compression of the invisible editor. Traditional A/B testing was never designed to measure any of that.</li><li>And if you’re one of the many brands that never had enough traffic to run meaningful multivariate tests in the first place, recognize that the constraint just evaporated. AI-native experimentation doesn’t require a single visitor to your site. The barrier to entry that kept rigorous testing out of reach for mid-market and niche brands is gone.</li></ul><h3 id="the-bigger-picture">The bigger picture</h3>This connects back to the H2A→A2H framework in a way that I think matters. The old experimentation model was built for an H2H world; a world where you published content for humans, tested it on humans, and optimized it for humans. The H2A→A2H world adds a new constituency that sits upstream of your human audience and makes editorial decisions about whether they see your content at all. Experimentation has to evolve to serve both.The brands that figure this out won’t just have better conversion rates. They’ll stop paying the learning tax on their audience, they’ll unlock experimentation capabilities that were previously gated by traffic volume, and they’ll start optimizing for the audience that actually determines their visibility.The crash test dummies are about to be retired. And honestly, it’s about time. <hr /><h3 id="upcoming-events">Upcoming Events</h3>  <a target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer" href="https://kontent.ai/events-and-webinars/raise-amsterdam/?utm_campaign=awareness-fy26&amp;utm_source=cms-critic&amp;utm_medium=referral&amp;pi_campaign_id=117478"><img style="width:23.45%" src="https://cmscritic.com/ms-content/uploads/2026/04/raise-logo-kontent.jpg" alt="" /></a><h4 id="raise-amsterdam"><a target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer" href="https://kontent.ai/events-and-webinars/raise-amsterdam/?utm_campaign=awareness-fy26&amp;utm_source=cms-critic&amp;utm_medium=referral&amp;pi_campaign_id=117478">RAISE Amsterdam</a></h4>May 20, 2026 – Amsterdam, NetherlandsSponsored by Kontent.ai, RAISE Amsterdam brings together bold marketing and technology leaders to explore how agentic AI is reshaping the way ambitious brands create and deliver content and what it takes to use it safely, responsibly, and with proper governance. Experience the ideas that are shaping the future and dive into big thinking, innovative strategies, and expert insights. Held at the Klein Canvas, Volkshotel, you'll hear from world-class speakers in dynamic sessions that will reveal how AI-powered content operations are accelerating production, improving governance, and driving creative impact. <a target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer" href="https://kontent.ai/events-and-webinars/raise-amsterdam/?utm_campaign=awareness-fy26&amp;utm_source=cms-critic&amp;utm_medium=referral&amp;pi_campaign_id=117478">Limited spots are available, so book yours today.</a> <img style="width:30.13%" src="https://cmscritic.com/ms-content/uploads/2025/12/image-1765546475634.png" /><h4 id="umbraco-codegarden-2026"><a target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer" href="https://codegarden.umbraco.com/">Umbraco Codegarden 2026</a></h4>June 10–11, 2026 – Copenhagen, DKJoin us in Copenhagen (or online) for the biggest Umbraco conference in the world – two full days of learning, genuine conversations, and the kind of inspiration that brings business leaders, developers, and digital creators together. Codegarden 2026 is packed with both business and tech content, from deep-dive workshops and advanced sessions to real-world case studies and strategy talks. You’ll leave with ideas, strategies, and knowledge you can put into practice immediately. <a target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer" href="https://codegarden.umbraco.com/">Book your tickets today.</a> <a target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer" href="https://www.boye-co.com/conferences/cmsconnect26"><img style="width:41.96%" src="https://cmscritic.com/ms-content/uploads/2026/05/cms-connect-logo-26.jpg" /></a><h4 id="cms-connect-26"><a target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer" href="https://www.boye-co.com/conferences/cmsconnect26">CMS Connect 26</a></h4>August 5-6, 2026 – Montreal, CanadaThe best conferences create space for honest, experience-based conversations. Not sales pitches. Not hype. Just thoughtful exchanges between people who spend their days designing, building, running, and evolving digital experiences. CMS Connect brings together people who share real stories from their work and platforms and who are interested in learning from each other on how to make things better. Over two days in Montreal, you can expect practitioner-led talks grounded in experience, conversations about trade-offs, constraints, and decisions, and time to compare notes with peers facing similar challenges. Space is limited for this exclusive event, <a target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer" href="https://www.boye-co.com/conferences/cmsconnect26">so book your seats today.</a> <img style="width:36.69%" src="https://cmscritic.com/ms-content/uploads/2026/01/open-source-cms-26.jpg" /><h4 id="open-source-cms-26"><a target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer" href="https://www.boye-co.com/conferences/opensourcecms26">Open Source CMS 26</a></h4>October 20–21, 2026 – Utrecht, NetherlandsJoin us for the first annual edition of our prestigious international conference dedicated to making open source CMS better. This event is already being called the “missing gathering place” for the open source CMS community – an international conference with confirmed participants from Europe and North America. Be part of a friendly mix of digital leaders from notable open source CMS projects, agencies, even a few industry analysts who get together to learn, network, and talk about what really matters when it comes to creating better open source CMS projects right now and for the foreseeable future. <a target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer" href="https://www.boye-co.com/conferences/opensourcecms26/tickets">Book your tickets today.</a> <img style="width:35.73%" src="https://cmscritic.com/ms-content/uploads/2026/05/image-1778200565145.png" /><h4 id="contentstack-contentcon-2026">Contentstack <a target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer" href="https://www.contentstack.com/contentcon">ContentCon 2026</a></h4>September 30 - October 1, Amsterdam  /  October 27-28, 2026 – ChicagoContentstack’s annual customer conference is the premier event for executives, marketing leaders, and developers to redefine their digital experience strategy. This is your opportunity to step out of the "status quo" and into "elite" status, learning exactly how the world’s most successful brands are using the technology you already own to do the impossible. Enjoy a full day of interactive workshops, certifications, and inspirational on-stage sessions designed to help you become an expert on cutting-edge digital strategies and how to turn Contentstack's CMS and adaptive personalization tools into your greatest competitive advantage.<a target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer" href="https://www.jdayusa.com/"> </a><a target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer" href="https://www.contentstack.com/contentcon">Book your seats today.</a>

Stop Testing on Your Audience

scottliewehr

Matt & Matt, Episode 5: Karaoke Nights, Live from Vimeo in NYC, and Who Doesn’t Know AEO?

cms-critic-staff

The Razor’s Edge of AEO: How Razorfish is Sharpening the Future of AI Search

matt-garrepy

Controlling the Agentic Climb: Contentstack is Elevating Adaptive Experiences with its AXP Vision

Seeing the ‘Agentic Forest’ Through the Trees: Andy Cohen on Taming the AI Wilderness

10x Marks the Spot: Treasure Data’s Shift to ‘Treasure AI’ Maps New Value in the Agentic Era

<hr /> When I spun a <a target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer" href="https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/a-tale-of-two-phils-exploring-umbracos-open/id1801794414?i=1000749874476">“Tale of Two Phils”</a> on an episode of <a target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer" href="https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/cms-critic-the-critics-corner-podcast/id1801794414">The Critic’s Corner Podcast</a> earlier this year, I wasn’t prepared for how complementary my two guests would sound. If you listen to the conversation, there are multiple such intersections between <a target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer" href="https://cmscritic.com/products/umbraco">Umbraco</a> CTO <a target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer" href="https://www.linkedin.com/in/filipbech/">Filip Bech-Larsen</a> and Staff Engineer (and resident AI guru) <a target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer" href="https://www.linkedin.com/in/phil-whittaker-82481716/">Phil Whitaker</a><a target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer" href="https://www.linkedin.com/in/filipbech/">.</a> In many ways, the two complete each other, handing off thoughts like an MCP server connecting the dots. It elevated the knowledge on multiple levels.This makes the collaboration a solid one for Umbraco, an open source CMS that continues to diligently push forward on its agentic AI ambitions. The company’s steady pace of innovation just took another leap forward with the launch of new Backoffice Extension Skills, which are based on Anthropic’s <a target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer" href="https://resources.anthropic.com/hubfs/The-Complete-Guide-to-Building-Skill-for-Claude.pdf">Agent Skills</a>. <figure class="image image_resized" style="width:32.52%"><img src="https://cmscritic.com/ms-content/uploads/2026/04/phil-whittaker-2.jpg" alt="" /></figure>Umbraco Staff Engineer (AI) Phil Whitaker “We’re seeing a fundamental shift in how digital projects are delivered,” Whitaker said, driving home the key advantages of these new additions to Umbraco. “AI is becoming the starting point for new projects and is where developers explore ideas. Backoffice Extension Skills ensure that when your team uses an AI assistant, the correct Umbraco knowledge is available.”<img /><figure class="image image_resized" style="width:80.99%"><img src="https://cmscritic.com/ms-content/uploads/2026/04/umbraco-ai-platform-winter-2026.png" alt="" /></figure>Source: Umbraco Winter Keynote 2026 Umbraco’s aggressive AI product horizon was teased during its <a target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer" href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GK-eGhzZYpw">Winter Keynote in February,</a> and several digital agency partners are experimenting with creating AI-based workflows. This includes some strong use cases, such as <a target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer" href="https://digitalwonderlab.com/umbraco-agency/umbraco-lab-notes/alt-text-shouldnt-be-this-hard-so-we-fixed-it/">Digital Wonderlab’s automated Alt Text generator</a> for improving website accessibility.<h3 id="what-are-agent-skills?-">What are Agent Skills? </h3>In a nutshell, Anthopic’s Agent Skills are like “onboarding guides” that enable AI to execute specific, complex workflows – like data analysis or file creation – without overloading its context window. Agent Skills provide modular, reusable, and organized packages that contain instructions and scripts that help developers and users build, share, and deploy agents that are more effective and context-aware.Anthropic launched Agent Skills as an open standard in December 2025 under <a target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer" href="https://www.linuxfoundation.org/">The Linux Foundation.</a> Since then, they’ve been widely adopted, working across Claude and other AI platforms.<h3 id="maintaining-control-and-extensibility">Maintaining control and extensibility</h3>Umbraco’s Backoffice Extension Skills are like a roadmap for AI agents, guiding them to the most up-to-date Umbraco documentation, examples, and source code. Skills are exposed using a standardized endpoint that can be called by AI tools like <a target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer" href="https://claude.ai/">Claude</a>, <a target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer" href="https://chatgpt.com/">ChatGPT</a>, or custom <a target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer" href="https://www.langchain.com/langchain">LangChain agents</a> – making it incredibly extensible.With this guidance, LLMs and agents use the most current version of the Umbraco software and the essential modern frameworks – where they can effectively customize the backoffice or complete tasks like building dashboards or property editors. All of Umbraco’s Backoffice Extension points are registered, documented, and supported, ensuring that customizations are maintained.According to Filip Bech-Larsen, Umbraco’s Backoffice Extension Skills are the first series of skills, aimed at supporting developers using AI agents for building and extending their digital projects. <figure class="image image_resized" style="width:32.75%"><img src="https://cmscritic.com/ms-content/uploads/2026/04/filip-bech-larsen-1777422652939.jpg" alt="" /></figure>Umbraco CTO Filip Bech-Larsen “Agent Skills mirror the way that Umbraco’s Backoffice Extension points work,” he added. “Each Backoffice Extension point links AI Skills to the latest Umbraco documentation, source code, and examples. This supports safer development and positions Umbraco as one of the first major CMS platforms to deliver a comprehensive, agent-ready architecture.”Ready to level up your skills? <a target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer" href="https://umbraco.com/blog/the-agent-ready-cms-introducing-agent-skills-umbraco-backoffice-extension/">Learn more here.</a><h3 id="building-on-an-agentic-ai-foundation">Building on an agentic AI foundation</h3>The proof is in the pudding, as they say – and Umbraco’s partners are putting its growing AI capabilities to work. Several use cases are nominated for the <a target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer" href="https://codegarden.umbraco.com/awards/">Umbraco Awards</a> at the upcoming <a target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer" href="https://codegarden.umbraco.com/">Codegarden 2026,</a> which is being held June 10-11 in Copenhagen. Case in point: <a target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer" href="https://www.linkedin.com/in/dennis-adolfi/">Dennis Adolfi</a>, head of technology at <a target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer" href="https://www.linkedin.com/showcase/knowit-experience/">Knowit Experience,</a> a leading digital agency based in the Nordics, recently shared an innovative agentic solution for <a target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer" href="https://www.linkedin.com/company/bewigroup/">BEWI Group.</a> In the use case, agents assist or fully manage complete workflows in the dev cycle, from design to code to deployment – even through content creation. The solution relies on <a target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer" href="http://umbraco.ai/">Umbraco.AI</a> and Umbraco’s MCP to deliver transformative results, the kind that have earned Knowit a nomination for Umbraco’s Best Innovation with AI Award. “[Umbraco] really is a CMS built for AI,” Adolfi said. Another contender for this category comes from <a target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer" href="https://www.perplex.nl/en/">Perplex Digital</a>, which developed an AI-powered solution for <a target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer" href="https://www.linkedin.com/company/autolease-van-centraal-beheer/">Autolease van Centraal Beheer,</a> allowing users to literally “talk” to their website. The agency replaced the company’s static navigation with conversation, making it easier for customers to use the site when they’re unable to manually browse for information. They can fill out forms simply by using their voice, making the company’s services more accessible. <a target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer" href="https://nxtds.com">NXT Digital Solutions Ltd </a>is also nominated for a dynamic CMS migration project for <a target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer" href="https://www.exclusive-networks.com/">Exclusive Networks</a>. NXT introduced Umbraco's Backoffice Agents to automate content tagging, publishing pipelines, and version control to resolve critical indexing failures that were affecting over 1,300 pages – making content more discoverable to search engines and users.<h3 id="why-it-matters">Why it matters</h3>Umbraco continues to introduce high-value tooling for its AI capabilities, and the alignment with Anthropic's Agent Skills is a sage move. By embedding an agent-ready architecture directly into its flexible and extensible CMS, it's moving beyond bolt-on assistants to guided, governed solutions – the kind that provide solid ground for faster and safer agent performance. As is evidenced by the use cases above, it's clear that Umbraco's partners are proving out the potential for how AI and agents can be successfully applied. My bet is that the “Two Phils” are seeing some innovative outcomes they weren't even anticipating. And I'm sure they would agree that's a good thing. <hr /><h3 id="upcoming-events">Upcoming Events</h3> <img style="width:34.15%" src="https://cmscritic.com/ms-content/uploads/2026/01/logo_jday_hor.png" /><h4 id="joomladay-usa-2026"><a target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer" href="https://www.jdayusa.com/">JoomlaDay USA 2026</a></h4>April 29 - May 2, 2026 – Delray Beach, FloridaBe part of the Joomla community in one of the most iconic cities in the world! JoomlaDay USA 2026 is coming to Delray Beach, and you can join us for a dynamic event packed with insights, workshops, and networking opportunities. Learn from top Joomla experts and developers offering valuable insights and real-world solutions. Participate in interactive workshops and sessions and enhance your skills in Joomla management, development, design, and more. And connect with fellow Joomla enthusiasts, developers, and professionals from across the world.<a target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer" href="https://www.jdayusa.com/"> Book your seats today.</a> <img style="width:30.06%" src="https://cmscritic.com/ms-content/uploads/2026/01/cms-summit-26-logo.jpg" alt="" /><h4 id="cms-summit-26"><a target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer" href="https://www.boye-co.com/conferences/cmssummit26">CMS Summit 26</a></h4>May 12-13, 2026 – Frankfurt, GermanyThe best conferences create space for honest, experience-based conversations. Not sales pitches. Not hype. Just thoughtful exchanges between people who spend their days designing, building, running, and evolving digital experiences. CMS Summit brings together people who share real stories from their work and platforms and who are interested in learning from each other on how to make things better. Over two days in Frankfurt, you can expect practitioner-led talks grounded in experience, conversations about trade-offs, constraints, and decisions, and time to compare notes with peers facing similar challenges. Space is limited for this exclusive event, <a target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer" href="https://www.boye-co.com/conferences/cmssummit26/tickets">so book your seats today.</a> <a target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer" href="https://kontent.ai/events-and-webinars/raise-amsterdam/?utm_campaign=awareness-fy26&amp;utm_source=cms-critic&amp;utm_medium=referral&amp;pi_campaign_id=117478"><img style="width:23.45%" src="https://cmscritic.com/ms-content/uploads/2026/04/raise-logo-kontent.jpg" alt="" /></a><h4 id="raise-amsterdam"><a target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer" href="https://kontent.ai/events-and-webinars/raise-amsterdam/?utm_campaign=awareness-fy26&amp;utm_source=cms-critic&amp;utm_medium=referral&amp;pi_campaign_id=117478">RAISE Amsterdam</a></h4>May 20, 2026 – Amsterdam, NetherlandsSponsored by Kontent.ai, RAISE Amsterdam brings together bold marketing and technology leaders to explore how agentic AI is reshaping the way ambitious brands create and deliver content and what it takes to use it safely, responsibly, and with proper governance. Experience the ideas that are shaping the future and dive into big thinking, innovative strategies, and expert insights. Held at the Klein Canvas, Volkshotel, you'll hear from world-class speakers in dynamic sessions that will reveal how AI-powered content operations are accelerating production, improving governance, and driving creative impact. <a target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer" href="https://kontent.ai/events-and-webinars/raise-amsterdam/?utm_campaign=awareness-fy26&amp;utm_source=cms-critic&amp;utm_medium=referral&amp;pi_campaign_id=117478">Limited spots are available, so book yours today.</a> <img style="width:30.13%" src="https://cmscritic.com/ms-content/uploads/2025/12/image-1765546475634.png" /><h4 id="umbraco-codegarden-2026"><a target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer" href="https://codegarden.umbraco.com/">Umbraco Codegarden 2026</a></h4>June 10–11, 2026 – Copenhagen, DKJoin us in Copenhagen (or online) for the biggest Umbraco conference in the world – two full days of learning, genuine conversations, and the kind of inspiration that brings business leaders, developers, and digital creators together. Codegarden 2026 is packed with both business and tech content, from deep-dive workshops and advanced sessions to real-world case studies and strategy talks. You’ll leave with ideas, strategies, and knowledge you can put into practice immediately. <a target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer" href="https://codegarden.umbraco.com/">Book your tickets today.</a> <img style="width:36.69%" src="https://cmscritic.com/ms-content/uploads/2026/01/open-source-cms-26.jpg" /><h4 id="open-source-cms-26"><a target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer" href="https://www.boye-co.com/conferences/opensourcecms26">Open Source CMS 26</a></h4>October 20–21, 2026 – Utrecht, NetherlandsJoin us for the first annual edition of our prestigious international conference dedicated to making open source CMS better. This event is already being called the “missing gathering place” for the open source CMS community – an international conference with confirmed participants from Europe and North America. Be part of a friendly mix of digital leaders from notable open source CMS projects, agencies, even a few industry analysts who get together to learn, network, and talk about what really matters when it comes to creating better open source CMS projects right now and for the foreseeable future. <a target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer" href="https://www.boye-co.com/conferences/opensourcecms26/tickets">Book your tickets today.</a>

Level Up Your Agent Skills: Umbraco’s Agent-Ready Architecture Promises Faster, Safer Development

<a target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer" href="https://cmscritic.com/critics/geetha-rajan">Geetha Rajan</a> is a strategy executive advising Fortune 500 companies on AI adoption, AI transformation, and organizational change, and a CMS Critic contributor. <hr /> <a target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer" href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vibe_coding">Vibe coding</a> has collapsed the barrier to building software. It hasn’t moved the barrier to selling it.The numbers tell the story clearly. According to the <a target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer" href="https://survey.stackoverflow.co/2025/">Stack Overflow 2025 Developer Survey,</a> which surveyed nearly 50,000 developers, 84% now use AI coding tools. Yet only 29% trust their accuracy, down from 40% the year prior. <a target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer" href="https://cmscritic.com/products/google-cloud-platform">Google Cloud’s</a> <a target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer" href="https://linearb.io/resources/dora-report">DORA 2025 State of DevOps Report</a> puts daily AI tool usage across software teams at 90%. The volume of output this is producing is staggering. And it is flooding enterprise procurement queues with products that weren’t built for the environment they’re trying to enter.I’ve spent the past several years evaluating early-stage AI products as a judge and mentor across startup competitions and accelerators and conducting independent research into why enterprise AI initiatives fail at scale. The pattern I see repeatedly: the tools are getting faster, more polished, and easier to spin up. But the enterprise buying process hasn’t changed at all. And in a market flooded with vibe-coded submissions, the gap between what founders ship and what enterprises actually purchase is wider than ever.<h3 id="features-were-never-the-moat">Features Were Never the Moat</h3>Here’s the uncomfortable truth for vendors watching their feature differentiation erode: in enterprise, features were rarely what closed the deal in the first place.I’ve been in the rooms where these decisions get made. The vendor who won was rarely the one with the best demo. It was the one who made the enterprise feel safest.Safe means something specific. It means the CISO’s questions were answered before they were asked. It means compliance documentation showed up in meeting one, not when procurement requested it. It means the vendor understood the buyer’s data architecture before pitching a solution that depended on it.The security data makes the CISO’s caution rational rather than obstructive. <a target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer" href="https://www.veracode.com/blog/spring-2026-genai-code-security/">Veracode’s Spring 2026 GenAI Code Security Update</a> found that 45% of AI-generated code contains security flaws – and that cross-site scripting failures appear in 85% of AI-generated code samples tested. Vibe coding has commoditized the how of software development. It has raised the price of the why. When anyone can generate a feature, the buyer’s focus shifts from the code to the standards that ensure the tool can actually function inside a composable, integrated enterprise stack. Architectural credibility isn’t something you can prompt your way into.Most founders discover the CISO has veto power in week ten, when a data residency concern surfaces that could have been addressed in the first conversation – and the deal quietly dies. I’ve watched this happen: a founder demos beautifully, earns a pilot, and learns in month three that their data handling doesn’t meet the buyer’s regulatory requirements. The product didn’t change. The environment it was entering never changed either. Nobody asked.The vendors who navigate this successfully don’t avoid the security conversation. They lead with it. Vibe coding can replicate a feature. It cannot replicate the organizational credibility that comes from having navigated these conversations before.<h3 id="you’re-not-selling-to-a-platform-decision-—-you’re-selling-to-a-population">You’re Not Selling to a Platform Decision — You’re Selling to a Population</h3>Every enterprise contains roughly the same distribution of people, each requiring a completely different approach. <figure class="image image_resized" style="width:44.67%"><img src="https://cmscritic.com/ms-content/uploads/2026/04/pilot-to-scale-diagram.jpg" /></figure>The Four Segments Model – Pilots to Scale™ Framework From my research across hundreds of enterprise engagements, four segments appear reliably. Champions – roughly 20% of any organization – are already experimenting and will advocate internally. The mistake is finding one and treating it as the whole story. Explorers, the largest group at around 40%, want to adopt but don’t know where to start. They need structure, not a blank canvas. Skeptics have watched technology initiatives fail before; they move on evidence, not enthusiasm. Experts have deep technical fluency but limited organizational reach – waste them on easy problems and you lose their endorsement entirely.One playbook fails across all four. The vendors who succeed map their approach to the segment in front of them, not the one they wish they were talking to. Vibe coding can ship a feature overnight. It cannot segment an organization’s adoption posture for you.<h3 id="the-three-things-that-actually-close-enterprise-deals">The Three Things That Actually Close Enterprise Deals</h3>What remains from every enterprise evaluation I’ve been part of or studied are three things: trust, predictability, and demonstrated value.Trust is built before the first slide. It comes from signals about organizational seriousness, security readiness, and long-term viability. In a market suddenly flooded with vibe-coded tools, the question enterprise buyers are quietly asking is: will this vendor exist in three years? Will they support the integration we build around them? Can I defend this decision internally when something breaks?Predictability stems from the pilot’s structure. A pilot run on clean, sanitized data in a controlled environment is not a pilot – it’s a controlled experiment. Real enterprise environments have missing fields, inconsistent formats, legacy systems feeding into one another, and edge cases that nobody documented. The product that performed beautifully in the demo encounters production and produces something entirely different. Founders who scope pilots like a product trial – 30 days, friendly users, no real production complexity – win the pilot and lose the deal.Value is earned through a business case the buyer helped build. An ROI model you construct alone will be challenged on every assumption when it reaches a procurement committee. A business case built with the buyer’s own numbers and validated by their own team becomes their internal mandate. They will defend it. You are not selling them a product – you are giving them the ammunition to buy it.<h2 id="the-adoption-gap-vibe-coding-ignores">The Adoption Gap Vibe Coding Ignores</h2>While vibe coding has produced an explosion in code volume, the reality of production is stark. According to <a target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer" href="https://fortune.com/2025/08/18/mit-report-95-percent-generative-ai-pilots-at-companies-failing-cfo/">MIT’s NANDA research, 95% of generative AI pilots fail to deliver measurable ROI </a>despite tens of billions in cumulative spend. McKinsey’s 2025 State of AI report found that only 5.5% of organizations are seeing real financial returns. And a March 2026 survey of technology leaders by Digital Applied found that just 14% of enterprises have reached production scale for AI agents.<ul><li>We aren’t suffering from a lack of code. We’re suffering from a lack of certainty.</li><li>78% of enterprises have deployed AI. Only 4% are scaling it.</li><li>That gap is not a technology problem.</li></ul>It is an execution environment failure – one I’ve tracked directly through my own interviews with over 200 operational leaders, and the basis for the <a target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer" href="https://www.operablestrategy.com/research">Pilots to Scale™ framework.</a> The middle layer of the enterprise, the managers responsible for translating platform decisions into operational reality, is consistently where adoption stalls. Not because of executive resistance. The organizational infrastructure required to operationalize what was purchased hasn’t been built yet.Vibe coding accelerates the supply side of this equation. It does nothing for the demand side. If anything, it widens the gap – more products entering an environment no more ready to absorb them than it was before.<h3 id="what-the-moat-actually-is">What the Moat Actually Is</h3>The vendors who will survive this moment are not the ones who out-feature the vibe coders. They’re the ones who have built something vibe coding genuinely cannot replicate: a track record of navigating enterprise complexity, a community of practitioners who can vouch for them, and an organizational understanding of what it takes to get a platform adopted – not just purchased.What enterprise is buying has always had the same answer. Confidence that this will still be working and still be supported in three years. Assurance that the vendor understands their environment well enough to be a real partner in it. A reduction of organizational risk, not an addition of organizational capability.Vibe coding didn’t break the enterprise software model. It exposed what the model was. <hr /><h3 id="upcoming-events">Upcoming Events</h3> <img style="width:34.15%" src="https://cmscritic.com/ms-content/uploads/2026/01/logo_jday_hor.png" /><h4 id="joomladay-usa-2026"><a target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer" href="https://www.jdayusa.com/">JoomlaDay USA 2026</a></h4>April 29 - May 2, 2026 – Delray Beach, FloridaBe part of the Joomla community in one of the most iconic cities in the world! JoomlaDay USA 2026 is coming to Delray Beach, and you can join us for a dynamic event packed with insights, workshops, and networking opportunities. Learn from top Joomla experts and developers offering valuable insights and real-world solutions. Participate in interactive workshops and sessions and enhance your skills in Joomla management, development, design, and more. And connect with fellow Joomla enthusiasts, developers, and professionals from across the world.<a target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer" href="https://www.jdayusa.com/"> Book your seats today.</a> <img style="width:30.06%" src="https://cmscritic.com/ms-content/uploads/2026/01/cms-summit-26-logo.jpg" alt="" /><h4 id="cms-summit-26"><a target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer" href="https://www.boye-co.com/conferences/cmssummit26">CMS Summit 26</a></h4>May 12-13, 2026 – Frankfurt, GermanyThe best conferences create space for honest, experience-based conversations. Not sales pitches. Not hype. Just thoughtful exchanges between people who spend their days designing, building, running, and evolving digital experiences. CMS Summit brings together people who share real stories from their work and platforms and who are interested in learning from each other on how to make things better. Over two days in Frankfurt, you can expect practitioner-led talks grounded in experience, conversations about trade-offs, constraints, and decisions, and time to compare notes with peers facing similar challenges. Space is limited for this exclusive event, <a target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer" href="https://www.boye-co.com/conferences/cmssummit26/tickets">so book your seats today.</a> <a target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer" href="https://kontent.ai/events-and-webinars/raise-amsterdam/?utm_campaign=awareness-fy26&amp;utm_source=cms-critic&amp;utm_medium=referral&amp;pi_campaign_id=117478"><img style="width:23.45%" src="https://cmscritic.com/ms-content/uploads/2026/04/raise-logo-kontent.jpg" alt="" /></a><h4 id="raise-amsterdam"><a target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer" href="https://kontent.ai/events-and-webinars/raise-amsterdam/?utm_campaign=awareness-fy26&amp;utm_source=cms-critic&amp;utm_medium=referral&amp;pi_campaign_id=117478">RAISE Amsterdam</a></h4>May 20, 2026 – Amsterdam, NetherlandsSponsored by Kontent.ai, RAISE Amsterdam brings together bold marketing and technology leaders to explore how agentic AI is reshaping the way ambitious brands create and deliver content and what it takes to use it safely, responsibly, and with proper governance. Experience the ideas that are shaping the future and dive into big thinking, innovative strategies, and expert insights. Held at the Klein Canvas, Volkshotel, you'll hear from world-class speakers in dynamic sessions that will reveal how AI-powered content operations are accelerating production, improving governance, and driving creative impact. <a target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer" href="https://kontent.ai/events-and-webinars/raise-amsterdam/?utm_campaign=awareness-fy26&amp;utm_source=cms-critic&amp;utm_medium=referral&amp;pi_campaign_id=117478">Limited spots are available, so book yours today.</a> <img style="width:30.13%" src="https://cmscritic.com/ms-content/uploads/2025/12/image-1765546475634.png" /><h4 id="umbraco-codegarden-2026"><a target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer" href="https://codegarden.umbraco.com/">Umbraco Codegarden 2026</a></h4>June 10–11, 2026 – Copenhagen, DKJoin us in Copenhagen (or online) for the biggest Umbraco conference in the world – two full days of learning, genuine conversations, and the kind of inspiration that brings business leaders, developers, and digital creators together. Codegarden 2026 is packed with both business and tech content, from deep-dive workshops and advanced sessions to real-world case studies and strategy talks. You’ll leave with ideas, strategies, and knowledge you can put into practice immediately. <a target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer" href="https://codegarden.umbraco.com/">Book your tickets today.</a> <img style="width:36.69%" src="https://cmscritic.com/ms-content/uploads/2026/01/open-source-cms-26.jpg" /><h4 id="open-source-cms-26"><a target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer" href="https://www.boye-co.com/conferences/opensourcecms26">Open Source CMS 26</a></h4>October 20–21, 2026 – Utrecht, NetherlandsJoin us for the first annual edition of our prestigious international conference dedicated to making open source CMS better. This event is already being called the “missing gathering place” for the open source CMS community – an international conference with confirmed participants from Europe and North America. Be part of a friendly mix of digital leaders from notable open source CMS projects, agencies, even a few industry analysts who get together to learn, network, and talk about what really matters when it comes to creating better open source CMS projects right now and for the foreseeable future. <a target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer" href="https://www.boye-co.com/conferences/opensourcecms26/tickets">Book your tickets today.</a>

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