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The discourse around AI in development sometimes seem to be a struggle between breathless evangelism and dismissive skepticism. At our Developer Summit this November we’ll help you understand what’s actually happening beneath the surface, with real-world use cases and experitise to help you shape how you and your team are adopting these technologies..

Demystifying the “Magic”

As engineers, we’re trained to distrust magic, yet we’re surrounded by tools that promise magical transformation. The session “How to Build an Agent, or: The Emperor Has No Clothes” takes direct aim at this paradox.

Rather than accepting agent-powered code editors like Claude Code, Cursor, and Windsurf at face value, Kevin Yank walks us through building one ourselves. This isn’t an academic exercise—it’s about understanding the mechanics so you can evaluate, adopt, and shape these tools intelligently. When you understand how the trick works, you can determine whether it’s genuinely transformative or merely sleight of hand.

From Conversation to Action

The shift from AI as conversational partner to active participant represents a fundamental evolution in how we think about development tools. Our sessions explore this transition through practical implementation, examining how AI systems connect to external tools and APIs through protocols like MCP.

This isn’t about chatbots that generate boilerplate. We’re examining AI that manages digital assets, analyzes images, executes file operations, and automates complex workflows. The Model Context Protocol sessions demonstrate how to build frontend-focused MCP integrations that developers actually want to use—tools that understand not just code but context, not just syntax but systems.

The Practice of AI-Augmented Development

What does it mean to develop with AI as a collaborator rather than just a tool? Sessions explore this question through multiple lenses:

Integration patterns: How do you evaluate and integrate MCP tools into existing workflows? What are the patterns that work, and which are merely attractive distractions?

Workflow transformation: Moving from “what can AI generate?” to “what can AI do?” The sessions examine file operations, API interactions, and task automation that extend far beyond code generation.

Practical skepticism: Understanding not just capabilities but limitations. Where does AI genuinely accelerate development, and where does it introduce complexity without corresponding value?

The Broader Context

While AI dominates the headlines, our programme recognizes that it’s one part of a larger transformation. The third revolution isn’t just about large language models—it’s about how AI intersects with evolving browser capabilities, new architectural patterns, and changing user expectations.

So we’ll explore how AI-powered assistants handle complex interactions across files, images, and APIs within seamless workflows. But we’ll also examine the infrastructure and patterns necessary to support these capabilities: the evolution of frontend system design, new approaches to state management, and the architectural decisions that enable or constrain AI integration.

A Framework for Evaluation

Perhaps most importantly, the AI-focused sessions provide frameworks for evaluation. In an environment saturated with vendor promises and breathless predictions, how do you assess what’s genuinely useful? How do you separate transformation from transaction, revolution from iteration?

The programme addresses these questions not through abstract theory but through concrete implementation. Build an agent yourself. Implement MCP integrations. Understand the mechanics. Only then can you make informed decisions about adoption and investment.

Looking Forward

The AI transformation in development is neither as magical as evangelists claim nor as trivial as skeptics suggest. It’s a genuine shift in how we conceive of and construct software, but one that requires careful evaluation and thoughtful adoption.

At Developer Summit, we’re not telling you what to think about AI in development. We’re providing the knowledge and tools to think clearly about it yourself. Join us as we move beyond the hype to understand what this transformation actually means for the practice of web development.