Apex Builder

APEX Builder provides structured Drupal content models and optional AI-assisted authoring on top of the APEX design system. Its modular package includes 12 content types, 18 custom view modes, 10 listing Views, a Paragraphs-based landing-page composer, and field-level drafting tools.

Site owners bring their own OpenAI or Anthropic API key through the APEX AI and Key modules. Provider requests go directly from the Drupal site to the selected provider; APEX Builder supplies the content schemas, prompts, validation, review interfaces, and Drupal entity assembly.

Enable only the content models you need

The parent module supplies shared field storage, two taxonomies, admin-form layout, and helper services. Each content type is a separate submodule:

• Article: Evergreen editorial, news, blog posts, and long-form writing.
• Page: Static material such as About, Privacy, and Terms content without section composition.
• Landing page: Paragraphs-driven pages assembled from installed paragraph bundles.
• Event: Scheduled in-person, online, or hybrid occurrences with dates, status, location, organizer, speaker, offer, and registration fields.
• Person: Individual team members, speakers, staff, and authors.
• Case study: Client context, challenge, approach, results, metrics, services, and an optional testimonial reference.
• FAQ: One question-and-answer pair per node, grouped by category.
• Resource: Downloadable or linked guides, reports, recordings, templates, and gated assets.
• Service: Organizational offerings with service type, deliverables, audience, price, currency, and call-to-action fields.
• Location: Physical places with discrete address, contact, hours, map, and business-type data.
• Announcement: Time-bound news with type, priority, publication date, and expiration.
• Testimonial: Attributed customer statements with subject, rating, source, author, and organization fields.

The fields are modeled around relevant Schema.org concepts, but the audited package does not itself emit complete JSON-LD or install Metatag mappings. Add and configure a structured-data solution separately, then validate its rendered output. Field labels and comments about Schema.org do not by themselves create search-engine markup.

Reusable displays and listings

Ten content modules provide a default listing View. Article, Announcement, Case study, Event, FAQ, Location, Person, Resource, Service, and Testimonial each ship a listing configuration. Static Page and Landing page intentionally do not.

The package declares 18 custom view modes for cards, teasers, featured items, quotes, and map pins. Because configuration is optional, Drupal installs it only when dependencies are available and conflicting configuration does not already exist. Review installed displays after enabling each content module.

AI Compose for landing pages

apex_builder_compose adds an AI Compose panel to node forms containing the Landing page sections field. An editor describes the desired page, and the module asks the configured provider for a structured section plan based on paragraph bundles that are actually installed.

1. Enter a page brief and generate a plan.
2. Review the read-only preview.
3. Reorder or remove sections, or regenerate one section's copy.
4. Choose Build page to replace the section field or Add to existing page to append.
5. Review and edit the resulting Paragraph entities before publishing.

The plan is revalidated when building. Unknown bundles and fields are removed, child placement and nesting depth are constrained, and content is assembled only against current Drupal field definitions. Placeholder media helps expose the layout before real assets are selected.

Compose requires at least one suitable paragraph bundle. Paragraphs Bundles is supported but not required; custom bundles can participate when their live field definitions are composable. Optional VVJ integrations can add supported Views patterns when those modules are installed.

A What you can build panel on the same form reports which discovered Paragraphs Bundles modules and curated VVJ patterns are enabled. Editors can see the building blocks available on the site, and disabled VVJ patterns include links to their project pages.

AI Assist inside content forms

apex_builder_assist adds an AI Studio panel only to supported APEX Builder node forms and only for users with its restricted permission. Editors can:

• Draft the type's prose fields from one brief.
• Select professional, warm, confident, friendly, or formal tone.
• Choose a short, medium, or long body target.
• Exclude individual fields from generation.
• Review the generated document before applying it to the form.
• Improve one existing field without regenerating the entire document.
• Match suggested tags only to terms already present in the referenced vocabulary.
• Optionally fill empty image fields with explicit placeholder media.

Placeholder images are opt-in and are added only when the editor selects that option. AI Assist currently supports Testimonial and can draft a quotation in an attributed customer's voice. Treat this only as draft structure: never publish an AI-generated attribution or quotation unless the named person or organization has verified and approved the exact wording.

Provider, cost, privacy, and review

The shared gateway selects a configured Claude or OpenAI provider and can fall back to the other configured provider. Structured requests receive one corrective retry when the first response is not valid JSON. Core flood control limits each user to 60 provider calls per hour, including corrective retries.

• The site owner supplies and pays for the provider account.
• The Key module stores the selected credential; APEX Builder does not provide a hosted proxy or included AI quota.
• Prompts and relevant content leave Drupal for the selected provider. Review provider terms, retention, geography, privacy, and organizational policy before enabling AI.
• Grant AI Assist and AI Compose permissions only to trusted editorial roles.
• Rate limiting caps one user's request volume; it is not a financial budget or provider-side spending limit.
• Generated copy can be inaccurate, biased, repetitive, or legally risky. Human review remains mandatory.

Requirements and compatibility

• Base APEX Builder modules: Drupal 11.3 or later, or Drupal 12
• Optional APEX AI feature stack: Drupal 11.3 or later within Drupal 11 under the current metadata
• PHP 8.3 or later
• APEX module
• Field Group
• Paragraphs
• APEX AI and Key for AI Assist or AI Compose

APEX Theme is the recommended visual companion, but themes cannot be declared as module dependencies. The content models use Drupal entity displays and can render in another compatible theme; APEX Theme supplies the tokens, regions, and components the package is designed around.

Installation

Install a minimal content stack with:

composer require 'drupal/apex_builder:^1.0'
drush en apex_builder apex_builder_article apex_builder_page -y
drush cr

For landing-page composition and AI authoring, install the provider and feature stack:

composer require drupal/key
drush en key apex_ai apex_builder_ai apex_builder_landing_page apex_builder_compose apex_builder_assist -y
drush cr

1. Enable only the required content-type modules.
2. Confirm their fields, form displays, view displays, taxonomies, and listing Views after optional configuration imports.
3. Create a Key entity for the chosen provider and select it in APEX AI settings.
4. Grant AI permissions to a small editorial test role.
5. Test prompts with non-sensitive content and review provider usage.
6. Configure Pathauto, redirects, Metatag, structured data, sitemaps, moderation, and editorial accessibility tools separately when required.
7. Export configuration and test installation, update, and uninstall behavior before production.

SEO and editorial quality

Structured fields can improve consistency and make metadata mapping easier, but they do not guarantee rankings. Search quality still depends on original helpful content, editorial review, canonical URLs, titles and descriptions, internal linking, structured-data implementation, crawl controls, sitemaps, media alternatives, and measured performance.

Do not publish an AI draft merely because it fits a field schema. Verify facts, sources, dates, prices, event status, people, locations, legal claims, image rights, testimonials, and calls to action. Run accessibility and content-quality checks on the finished rendered page.

Evaluation and support

Evaluate new releases with disposable or backed-up data before production use. Use the project's Drupal.org issue queue for reproducible defects. Include enabled Builder and APEX modules, content type, field and display configuration, provider, active theme, Drupal/PHP versions, logs with credentials removed, and steps to reproduce. Report suspected vulnerabilities privately through Drupal's security process rather than a public issue.

About the maintainer

APEX Builder is created and maintained by Alaa Haddad, Drupal developer and architect at Flash Web Center, LLC. It combines reusable Drupal content modeling with review-first AI workflows that remain under the site's control.

Developed and maintained by Alaa Haddad of Flash Web Center, LLC.

AI disclosure: AI tools assisted with drafting and reviewing this project description. The maintainer verified the final content against the project source.