A New Day for JCB: From Your Prompt to a Complete Joomla Component

[Llewellynvdm]

Joomla Component Builder has crossed the threshold of full AI integration. You can now describe an application to a browser-capable AI agent and have it build an entire Joomla component using JCB—complete with an editable project you can continue developing yourself.

This is a new chapter built on more than a decade of work. It brings together JCB’s compiler-driven development, Joomla’s application framework, and AI agents that can turn your requirements into a working component.

Llewellyn van der Merwe brought that journey to the Joomla World Conference. Now we invite you to watch the presentation, try the workflow, and help share the news.

Watch Llewellyn’s Joomla World Conference talk. Give the video a thumbs up, leave a comment, and share it with your Joomla community. Your support helps more developers discover what is now possible with JCB.

From setup to system design

On 16 October 2026, Llewellyn presented “From Setup to System Design: Building Full-Stack Applications with PHP, Joomla, AI, and Compiler-Driven Architecture.”

At the heart of the talk was a question that has shaped JCB for years: how can developers spend less time rebuilding repetitive application code and more time designing the system itself?

Every application needs structure: fields, views, relationships, permissions and behaviour. Joomla already provides much of the shared infrastructure, including authentication, access control, routing, database access and APIs. JCB lets developers define their application and compile those decisions into native Joomla extensions.

That changes where development effort goes. More attention can go towards what the application should do, how its parts relate, and how it will be maintained.

The conference talk explored how APIs and the JoomEngine MCP integration bring AI into that workflow. It also highlighted an important distinction: working with JCB to build an application, and working through a generated application’s API to use its data and features.

Today, that direction has reached an exciting milestone: an agent can carry out the complete component-building workflow in JCB.

Explain what you want. Let the agent build it.

To get started, use an AI agent that can interact with a browser and give it the JoomEngine skills repository.

Then describe the component you want.

Explain who will use it, what information it should manage, and which workflows it needs to support. The skills guide the agent through using JCB’s capabilities and implementing custom behaviour with reusable, maintainable PHP Powers.

The agent can build the component and return:

• An installable Joomla extension you can deploy.
• An editable JCB blueprint you can maintain and extend.
• A restorable Playground site containing the development environment and project.

The result remains part of the normal JCB development workflow. You can inspect it, change it, compile it again and keep developing it.

A complete Joomla environment in your browser

JoomEngine Playground makes this remarkably accessible.

MariaDB, PHP and Joomla run directly in the browser, with JCB installed for component development. You do not need to provision a server backend to run that Joomla environment.

The agent can work in its own Playground environment and deliver a restorable site package. You can then import that package into your own browser’s Playground and continue from where the agent finished.

From there, you can work with JCB as you normally would: change the implementation, save and back up the component, push your work to your own repositories, and compile new versions.

AI massively accelerates the initial setup. The project remains yours to understand, maintain and develop.

That continuity reflects a central point from the conference talk: developers still own the architecture and verify the result. JCB’s familiar workflow remains available, with or without AI.

Try it: build a workshop-registration component

Here is a practical prompt you can give to a browser-capable agent:

Use https://github.com/joomengine/skills to build a Joomla 6 workshop-registration component in JoomEngine Playground.

Organisers should manage events and venues, set capacities and registration deadlines, and review or export attendees. Visitors should browse events, register, cancel, and join a waiting list when an event is full. Include waiting-list promotion and attendance recording.

Use JCB's reusable capabilities and maintainable PHP Powers for custom behaviour. Keep the first version focused on free events. Demonstrate the complete registration and cancellation workflow, verify that capacity cannot be exceeded, and deliver the installable extension, editable JCB blueprint and a restorable Playground site.

This gives the agent a focused application with meaningful behaviour to implement and demonstrate. It also makes the expected handover clear: the extension, the editable blueprint and the restorable site.

Try it. Open the result. Follow the registration and cancellation workflows. Then start shaping the application around your own requirements.

Your feedback can improve everyone’s experience

The integration is working, and the skills will continue to grow through real-world use.

Sometimes an agent will misunderstand a requirement, overlook an existing JCB capability, or choose an unnecessarily complicated implementation. If you watch it work and think, “Why is it doing that?”, please tell us.

Open an issue in the JoomEngine skills repository.

Share the prompt you used, what you expected, and what the agent actually did. Include relevant screenshots or examples where possible.

We will take those reports into account as we improve the skills. Your experience can help address an edge case, clarify a confusing step, or teach agents to make better use of JCB’s existing capabilities.

The goal is for building advanced Joomla applications with JCB to become easier every day—and community contributions are an important part of that progress.

Help us share this new chapter

The Joomla World Conference was an opportunity to share the architecture, the journey and the direction of JCB with the wider Joomla community. The complete AI development workflow is now ready for you to explore.

We would appreciate your help getting the announcement out:

• Watch Llewellyn’s conference presentation.
• Give it a thumbs up to show your support.
• Leave a comment with your thoughts or the application you would like to build.
• Share the video with colleagues, Joomla groups and fellow developers.
• Try the prompt and help improve the skills through your feedback.

A new day for Joomla Component Builder has begun. Describe what you want to build—and put JCB and AI to work.