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

When I spun a “Tale of Two Phils” on an episode of The Critic’s Corner Podcast 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 Umbraco CTO Filip Bech-Larsen and Staff Engineer (and resident AI guru) Phil Whitaker. 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 Agent Skills.

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.”

Source: Umbraco Winter Keynote 2026

Umbraco’s aggressive AI product horizon was teased during its Winter Keynote in February, and several digital agency partners are experimenting with creating AI-based workflows. This includes some strong use cases, such as Digital Wonderlab’s automated Alt Text generator for improving website accessibility.

What are Agent Skills? 

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 The Linux Foundation. Since then, they’ve been widely adopted, working across Claude and other AI platforms.

Maintaining control and extensibility

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 Claude, ChatGPT, or custom LangChain agents – 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.

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? Learn more here.

Building on an agentic AI foundation

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 Umbraco Awards at the upcoming Codegarden 2026, which is being held June 10-11 in Copenhagen. 

Case in point: Dennis Adolfi, head of technology at Knowit Experience, a leading digital agency based in the Nordics, recently shared an innovative agentic solution for BEWI Group. 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 Umbraco.AI 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 Perplex Digital, which developed an AI-powered solution for Autolease van Centraal Beheer, 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. 

NXT Digital Solutions Ltd is also nominated for a dynamic CMS migration project for Exclusive Networks. 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.

Why it matters

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.

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