ProcessWire 3.0.273 – Core updates

[ryan]

This week we have a new AI-based ProcessWire installer committed on the dev branch. Now when you install ProcessWire, you have a choice of “Standard installation” or “AI-Assisted installation”. If you chose the AI option, then the next screen prompts you for your AI model ID, endpoint URL and API key. 

When the installer finishes installing the ProcessWire core, you are brought to the AI Site Builder where it asks you some questions about what you’d like to build, and then it builds it for you. 🙂 When it finishes, you can see what it did, and continue asking it to make refinements until you are finished. 

I always thought we needed more site profiles for ProcessWire, but now we have essentially have an unlimited number of potential site profiles when you use the AI installation. Note that the AI installation option also automatically installs the AgentTools module as well. 

 

 

 

Example of site built by by the installer/site-builder -- it even wrote all the text and documentation!

 

[Jonathan Lahijani]

Very cool.

I noticed the new installer is now independent of UIkit 3 and other dependencies.  My take is that UIkit, CSS frameworks, preprocessors like SCSS and LESS, even Tailwind, are not as relevant anymore given the capabilities of vanilla CSS today.  Furthermore, UIkit is really antiquated now, a product of a bygone era.  @ryan Did that thought cross your mind when developing the new installer / think about having an admin that is pure modern vanilla CSS, but still is Konkat?  Would you still use UIkit today for a new project?  

[ryan]

I still like using Uikit if I'm otherwise going to be writing the CSS and markup by hand. Due more to comfort than anything else. But if I'm getting AI help (as I did here) then I thought going with plain CSS and CSS vars was preferable. Is it still useful to spend all sorts of time hand coding all the markup and CSS? Probably not. But I still think it's beneficial to have a shared/modular environment like the admin standardized on a framework like Uikit.

[szabesz]

On 9/19/2026 at 12:13 AM, ryan said:

beneficial to have a shared/modular environment like the admin standardized on a framework like Uikit.

+1
If you ask your AI coding agent to write consistent CSS then it will invent its own ad hoc CSS framework, so I think it is a better idea to use a well-supported open-source CSS framework instead.

Uikit is indeed aging, I would vote for an up-to-date CSS variables-based framework instead. E.g.: https://www.beercss.com/

[HMCB]

@ryan, this is amazing. I am just catching up on a few weeks of PW news. Thanks for the effort on this. It’s going to be a Godsend.

I see the Site Builder tab/stage has “CSS approach.” Does that dropdown allow us to choose the CSS framework to use? Like if I wanted to use Tailwind?