Results of the 2026 Wagtail DX with AI survey
An overview of where we’re at with AI adoption for Developer Experience
A month ago, we launched our AI and Developer Experience community survey to better understand how developers in our community use AI on Wagtail projects. 48 people responded (thank you!). We’ll be using this information to adjust our project direction, in line with our AI guiding principles.
Key results
This was a quick survey with a short sample size, nonetheless there are a few patterns that jump out. On usage:
- 52% of respondents use AI tools "daily" or "always".
- 85% describe their experience level as "Familiar", "Confident", or "Advanced".
- 77% say AI on Wagtail projects works well.
- 20% of respondents already use our llms.txt format for docs, 14% use Wagtail AI, 12% use our Wagtail upgrade skill.
On possible ways to support adoption:
- Better docs (and all its variations) ranks highest by far. Top 3: more Django content in our developer docs. Docs in AI-focused formats like agent skills. Type hints in the code.
We’ll unpack this more at the upcoming What’s New in Wagtail webinar, and at Wagtail Space NL in June!
How often do you use AI tools when working on Wagtail projects?
Despite the small sample size, 52% of respondents using AI tools "daily" or more is clear signal we need to design Wagtail’s developer experience with those tools in mind.
How would you describe your level of experience with AI-assisted development?
Almost 50% of respondents describe their usage as "Advanced" or "Confident", so they’ve clearly been using AI for a little while. Do share your setup if that’s you!
How well does current AI tooling work on Wagtail projects?
There’s most likely an inherent Python/Django advantage here, with both being so popular, and well-documented. Countless resources and examples that AI models are trained on.
AI tools usage
Our results here differ a bit from the StackOverflow Developer Survey, likely because of when the surveys were conducted.
What kinds of AI tools do you use on projects?
All the top forms of tooling usage would likely benefit from greater amounts of Wagtail developer documentation. Both inside the code (type hints, docstrings) and outside (reference and how-to docs, skills).
Common tasks
The charts below are split between "low to no" AI use on the left side, and "medium to high" usage on the right side, so you can more easily compare the distribution.
How systematically do you use AI tools for the following tasks?
There is a pretty clear hierarchy here. A few highlights:
- 39.6% of respondents say they always use AI tools for code generation, and test generation, and 34% for debugging.
- For those same tasks, on the order of 10-15% of respondents say they never use AI tools.
For which Wagtail-related tasks do you regularly use AI assistance?
The answers here are more homogenous, with average scores between 1.70 and 1.25.
Do you use some of our existing efforts with AI in Wagtail?
We’re very happy with those usage figures, considering those three improvements for AI users were designed to be completely opt-in and gradual, and were released very recently.
- Wagtail AI v3, our biggest release, was in November 2025
- llms.txt format for docs was released in January 2026
- The Wagtail upgrade agent skill is from February
AI adoption considerations
With the first half of the survey focused on current usage / adoption levels, in the second half we’re now looking at how we might support AI adoption on projects in the future. Developers are clearly already getting a lot done with AI on their projects but there are likely opportunities to get better outcomes with those tools.
Please rate the importance of the following considerations for your team around AI adoption
It’s really important to us to encourage a thoughtful and responsible adoption of AI, that resolves or mitigates its fundamental pitfalls where possible. The results here are overall homogenous but here are our highlights:
- All 6 considerations score as "very important" for 35 to 50% of respondents.
- The highest are Ethics and bias; and legal liability / compliance.
For us, tackling those challenges starts with having a solid understanding of the implications of AI adoption. Being transparent about how and when we use AI to work on Wagtail and the challenges we’re facing as maintainers. And collecting data about AI usage, such as this survey, or measurements of the energy use of AI.
Please rate which possible improvements you think would be most helpful for AI-assisted development
It’s clear from this chart that interest in MCP servers has waned! Looking at the top half of the responses, there is a clear focus on documentation, that would help everyone working on projects have a better understanding of Wagtail’s capabilities and how to make the most of them.
- Better docs of Django capabilities on Wagtail projects
- Official rules / prompts / skills for AI tools
- Type hints for Python code
- Better documentation of Wagtail capabilities
- Machine-readable API references and code examples
- Official write API for programmatic content creation
Please rate which content management features you think would be most helpful for CMS users working with AI
This last question was a bit of a gamble as it’s always better to directly hear from CMS users, but worth a shot!
Again focusing on the first half of this list ordered by score, there are capabilities we are clearly planning for and expecting to support in the future:
- Image alt text generation - already part of Wagtail AI, and room for refinements!
- Natural language search - on our roadmap.
- Structured data / metadata generation - llms.txt support comes to mind here.
- Automated translations - already supported in wagtail-localize, with room for more refinements.
What next
Some of the suggested improvements will likely appear as standalone items on our project roadmap over the next two 2026 releases, while others will be more gradual changes. We’ll add to our backlog to receive more feedback on specific possible changes, and keep taking a look at the results of other surveys (2026 Django Developers survey!) to adjust the direction.
We’ll unpack this more at the upcoming What’s New in Wagtail webinar on 19th and 20th May, and at Wagtail Space NL in June!