ECA: The Next Chapter

The rebuilt Workflow Modeler & the Modeler API

Bluefly Collective Town Hall 2026
go.lakedrops.com/eca-bluefly-2026

Jürgen Haas

12. June 2026

About myself

Member on drupal.org for almost 19 years
Maintainer of ~100 modules

Find me online:
go.lakedrops.com/jurgenhaas

Creator and maintainer

Core Subsystem Maintainer
Admin Theme

Co-founder and Managing Director

What this session is

You know ECA. So no basics today.

~5 minutes of slides – the architecture and the “why”.

~20 minutes live in Drupal – the rebuilt Modeler, in-context, test & replay.

Interrupt me. Ask hard questions. That’s the fun part.

go.lakedrops.com/eca-bluefly-2026

The honest starting point

16,000+ active installs.

The most powerful automation engine in any CMS.

And yet – Dries put it to me privately:

“We all know ECA ships with Drupal CMS. But what does it do for the user?”

The uncomfortable answer: maybe 1% of its potential.

Not because the engine is weak.

Because the experience around it was.

The key insight: Modeler API

Three layers, three audiences

Non-technical

In-context customization.

Pick a template. Configure. Done. Never see “ECA”.

Technical

The full visual Modeler.

Build, test, replay, debug.

Developers

Plugin APIs on both sides.

New model owners. New panels. AI.

Live Demo

Switching to Drupal

Fallback: In-context customization

Fallback: From context into the Modeler

Fallback: Building & structured YAML

Fallback: Test, Replay, Debug

Why this matters for a collective like Bluefly

The strategic picture

An honest answer to “we need Zapier / n8n” – automation that lives inside Drupal, not next to it
ECA is one part of an orchestration layer: FlowDrop, Maestro, n8n, AI agents, MCP
Drupal becomes the hub

For your clients

Government, enterprise, higher-ed: accessible (WCAG AA), auditable, on-prem
Visual replay = real debuggability for complex workflows
Recipes & standalone viewer = shareable, reviewable automation

You serve government, enterprise, higher-ed. So here’s why this is more than a nicer UI.

The strategic answer: when a client says “we need Zapier” or “we need n8n”, you now have an answer that no SaaS tool can match - the automation lives inside Drupal, under their control, on their infrastructure. ECA is one piece of a broader orchestration layer alongside FlowDrop, Maestro, external services, AI agents, MCP. Drupal as the hub.

————-CLICK———————

For your clients specifically: WCAG AA accessibility tested in CI, full auditability, on-prem. Visual replay means you can actually debug a failed Commerce workflow instead of grepping logs. And recipes plus the standalone viewer make automation something you can hand to a stakeholder for review.

This is where I’d love your input - where should in-context show up next for the sectors you work in?

Built in the open

The numbers

6 weeks, ~90,000 lines, 1 developer
3,617 test cases – ~2.1x more test than production code
15 zero-tolerance CI gates
WCAG AA, axe-core in CI, dark mode
React 18 + TypeScript strict, React Flow

Where you can help

Defining context & dependency rules per use case
More in-context templates (recipes!)
New model owners on the Modeler API
Honest UX feedback from real client work

Slack: #eca-next-gen

Links

Slides go.lakedrops.com/eca-bluefly-2026

ECA processor drupal.org/project/eca
Modeler API drupal.org/project/modeler_api
Modeler drupal.org/project/modeler
BPMN.iO drupal.org/project/bpmn_io

ECA Guide ecaguide.org
Modeler API Docs project.pages.drupalcode.org/modeler_api
Modeler Docs project.pages.drupalcode.org/modeler

“ECA: The Next Chapter” series go.lakedrops.com/eca-next-chapter
ECA Use Cases series go.lakedrops.com/eca-use-case
Drupal Slack #eca-next-gen Find me go.lakedrops.com/jurgenhaas

Q&A

Thank you, Bluefly Collective!

go.lakedrops.com/eca-bluefly-2026

ECA · Modeler API · Modeler – all open source, all yours.