Drupal AI Week 35 Update: Tool API Released, Image Editing Improved, Async Support Added

Marcus Johansson shared a technical update on the Drupal AI Initiative for week 35. The highlight is the alpha release of the Tool API, a new standalone module that standardises how tools are defined and reused across different systems, including AI and automation tools like ECA. This allows developers to create tools once and use them in multiple places, all from the UI.

Image-to-image functionality has also been merged after a long review period. Thanks to advances in models like Nano Banana, this feature now offers consistent results and enables natural language-based image editing directly within Drupal.

The Tavily module has been updated as well, letting agents perform web searches and return results in either HTML or markdown format, useful for research or fact-checking.

Support for PHP Fibers is being added to allow asynchronous AI calls, reducing wait times for parallel tasks like field-by-field translation.

The team also refactored the provider architecture, creating a shared base class for providers that follow OpenAI’s API structure, cutting down on duplicate code and easing maintenance.

Smaller improvements include better support for batch translation via Drush, a unified exception interface, and updates to streaming support ahead of future tool-calling capabilities.

More updates will follow in future bi-weekly summaries. Developers can stay involved through the Drupal AI Initiative.