Weekly update – 21 August 2026

[ryan]

I've not been able to get my focus back just yet, but I am building momentum on a couple of cool things. I could have covered a lot of issue reports this week, but instead decided to build a module that would let AI agents pull issue reports, checkout a new worktree of the core, and submit patches for issues. Each issue resolution stored in a ProcessWire page, waiting for review.

Basically, I'm looking to automate the issue resolution process so that I can have a group of round-robin agents working on them at any time of the day, and then I can come in and review them with an overseeing AgentTools agent and tell it to either "apply and reply" or "send back for a different solution". This should enable us to cover issue reports much more quickly, and in much greater quantity. At this point the module is mostly built, but I still have a lot of testing to do.

I'm also working here on the business side of ProcessWire. I've been looking at different store solutions, and currently leaning towards staying with IP.Board, but with the newer revamped 5.x version, and with a completely external payment processor that handles the various tax considerations. This  better opens the door to supporting 3rd party modules, since we have code-level access to IP.Board, and ProcessWire collaboration, while I've yet to find any external service that would do what we need. 

That's all for this week, but hopefully back next week with core updates to report. Have a great weekend! 
 

[maximus]

I don't really like these innovations https://invisioncommunity.com/forums/topic/487351-5019-is-now-available/ I'd rather have something classic.. 

In my opinion, the simplest platform for a community is https://waterhole.dev , but there is no store there, but there is Laravel.

[Pete]

@maximus the problem with the forum software is we don't really have much choice - there are fewer good forum software packages out there and ones like InvisionCommunity here you either upgrade to 5.x finally or you eventually end up with security issues and being forced off 4.x at some point.

Migrating is a pain - it really is - I've done it so many times that the easiest path, for now at least, is to simply stick with what we know and accept some annoying changes. I did upgrade a site's forum from 4.x to 5.x and it wasn't that bad once I set the view back to the normal tabular view for forums and topics.

That said, I did check out Waterhole after briefly looking at Flarum on another project and it was nice - having heavily worked with Laravel on a complex platform for the past 6+ months where ProcessWire wasn't the right fit, Waterhole actually opens up a lot of doors because if you want to change anything it's just Laravel under the hood and Laravel is also very compatible with AI workloads so... it could be an option in future I guess but too much of a change right now - especially since the forum software here has commerce built into it.

@ryan happy to catch up when you have time on a few things I've found on my travels around forums and ecommerce? I think you'd still end up on InvisionCommunity but worth taking a quick look at the other options beforehand I reckon just in case there's something you're looking for that some other packages I've looked at might do differently and perhaps better.

Software dev all around is moving at a much faster pace and for me it's meant I'm picking up other tools for projects where I previously didn't have time where I was bending PW a little too much to fit something overly complex for it, but I'm also REALLY enjoying the speed stuff happens now with Agent Tools and the enhanced docs in the dev branch - teaching Claude how to best do things how I want it to is also coming along where it's doing things "my way" with less back and forth, but by default any AI isn't going to read your mind I guess... not yet anyway (not ever hopefully 😅).

[gebeer]

34 minutes ago, Pete said:

but by default any AI isn't going to read your mind I guess...

Often times it's sufficient for them to read the existing code. If that is in a shape you want to have it, they are pretty good at adapting. In an ideal world the codebase is the memory...

[Peter Knight]

 

Quote

it could be an option in future I guess but too much of a change right now - especially since the forum software here has commerce built into it.

I may be overlooking an existing limitation or requirement, but it seems to me there's no reason the forum software has to (or even should) support a commerce function.
IMHO, software for sale should live on the ProcessWire site and should not be bolted onto a forum ?
 

 

 

[maximus]

Thanks Pete — I agree that remaining on 4.x indefinitely isn't realistic, especially once security support ends. I also wasn't suggesting an immediate migration to Waterhole.

What bothers me is not only the forum listing. Looking at the linked Invision 5.0.19 community, the topic page itself now has a summary and estimated reading time, plus a large permanent sidebar with Top Posters, Popular Days, Most Popular Posts and Posted Images.

On desktop this makes the actual discussion narrower and gives analytics and discovery widgets almost equal visual weight to the posts. To me, it feels more like a social content dashboard than a focused technical forum.

If Invision 5 can be configured with a full-width classic topic view, clear author information, and those statistics collapsed or removed, then staying with it is obviously the lowest-risk path. Is that possible through normal settings or theme options, without maintaining fragile custom templates after every update?

I also agree with Peter that commerce does not necessarily need to determine the forum platform. The store could live on the ProcessWire site, with an external merchant of record handling payments and taxes, and a small integration handling accounts, licenses, downloads, third-party vendor payments and support access.

Separating the community and commerce layers would also make future forum decisions much easier.

@Pete @Peter Knight @ryan

[maximus]

One practical option for separating the store from the forum could be a headless Shopify setup.

Shopify can remain the commerce backend and admin for products, prices, inventory and orders, while ProcessWire owns the entire storefront UI through the Storefront API. The Customer Account API can handle buyer accounts, and order webhooks can provision module licenses, downloads and support access in ProcessWire.

The checkout itself would still redirect through Shopify's web checkout. One correction to my previous comment: Shopify is not automatically a merchant of record. It can calculate taxes and offers automated filing in supported configurations, but the merchant normally remains responsible for tax.

It also would not solve a multi-vendor module marketplace by itself. Vendor onboarding, commissions, payouts and licensing would still need a separate layer. But as a commerce backend behind a ProcessWire storefront, it looks like a realistic alternative to making the forum software own the store.

[ryan]

@maximus I'm pretty sure it would be configurable in that way. They've always had a different look going on the IP.Board site than what we use here. And the templates, at least in 4.x, are HTML with placeholders, so it's quite configurable. Hopefully that remains the case with 5.x. My assumption is that it would look very similar to how it does now, just updated to be more consistent with the current website design. 

Headless Shopify.... I hadn't considered that! I'm going to give this a look, thanks!