KentiCopilot: AI, migration and modern Kentico development

By Danny Paul Van Iersel, 23-02-2026

After eight years of working with Kentico, I thought I had my workflow dialled in. Research the best approach, check if it fits within the constraints of the current project, especially the legacy ones that don't always behave like the documentation suggests, then build, configure, test, and iterate. It was methodical, reliable and it worked.

Until I realised how much time I was leaving on the table.

AI as turning point in Kentico development

I've convinced: the old way of working is dead. And for me, that realisation didn't come from reading through piece or attending a keynote. it came from using KentiCopilot.

Here's what my workflow used to look like: start with research, dig through documentation, figure out the best solution for the specific project I'm working on, and than carefully implement; creating items in the platform, writing code, thinking through edge cases. On legacy projects, this could eat up significant time just figuring out what would actually work versus what the docs describe.

With KentiCopilot, that process fundamentally changed. The Coding Agents gives you answers that match exactly what the platform is capable of. Not generic suggestions, targeted guidance that reflects how Kentico actually works. It provides example code, explains how to manage items within the platform, and does it all in a way that brings the pieces together toward an optimal result.

"The first time I experienced that flow, I knew I wasn't going back."

Coding assistants are no longer a nice-to-have, they are the way forward. AI capabilities are evolving faster than we can fully comprehend, and the developers who learn into this shift will define the next era of our industry. The output multiplication is real. AI doesn't just help you write code faster, it sometimes generates solutions better than what you would have imagined on your own. Patterns you hadn't considered. Approaches you wouldn't have explored.

But this is a plug-and-play revolution. It requires a fundamentally way of thinking.

Context engineering is the new core skill

Prompt engineering, increasingly referred to as context engineering, can work wonders when applied well. Knowing how to frame your intent, provide the right constraints, and steer an AI assistant toward a meaningful result is becoming as important as knowing the platform itself.

And yet, sometimes the smartest move is to step back entirely. Don't restrict. Don't over-prescribe. Let the AI reason freely about a problem and see what it comes up with. Some of the best results I've experienced came from the assistant room to think, not boxing it with rigid instructions.

Here's the part that's harder to admit: I no longer need to be the person who knows everything about a project inside and out.

Do I want to be that person? Absolutely. After eight years of building with Kentico, and working across multiple CMS platforms simultaneously, I've always taken pride in being the one who understand every layer, every integration, every edge case. it's in my nature.

But being that person can also get in the way of progress. Holding on to that identity slows you down when the world is moving this fast. AI gives me access to more tools, more knowledge, and more capabilities than I could ever master in a single lifetime. The real skill now is knowing how to leverage them, not memorising them.

AI and the future: what's keeps me up at night

These capabilities don't just change how we work, they challenge what we thought work was.

Creating a new channel, launching a campaign, adding meaningful value to a site; it's becoming a matter of configuration and crafting the right prompt. The barrier between ideation and execution is shrinking at an unprecedented rate.

And that raises questions I can't ignore: Is it moving too fast? Is AI going to replace more than just a way of thinking? If one person gains the right know-how, do you truly need a larger team?

These are the thoughts that keep me up at night. As someone whose instinct is to be as efficient as possible, I see a major shift in how value is created and measured. The landscape is changing, and honestly it's changing for the better. But it demands that we rethink not just our tools, but our roles.

Why Kentico's approach works

What impresses me about Kentico is that they didn't just add AI to the marketing. They also built it into the developer experience.

KentiCopilot provides meaningful integration points that let your coding assistant work with you inside the Kentico ecosystem, not as disconnected tool bolted on from the outside. It optimises how you interact with the platform, ensures your AI assistant understands the full scope of what Kentico can do, and guides you towards the patterns and approaches that actually work. 

That distinction matters. This isn't about replacing developer knowledge. It's about amplifying it. When your AI understands the platform as well as you do, the collaboration becomes exponentially more powerful. The research phase that used to take hours now happens in the conversation itself, and the results are better for it.

With migrations from older versions like Kentico Xperience 11, 12 or 13 to the latest Xperience by Kentico, this is a major change. Spending less time on the actual migration frees up more time to:

• Include improvements

• Create new features

• Leverage new features Kentico provides in their product

In the traditional approach, modernisation takes up a lot of resources for manual alignment and planning, before starting any migration itself.

It minimises downtimes, shortens content freeze windows and reduces deployment complexity. Think of it this way: don't just migrate your system; collapse your time-to-market, turning a major risk into a strategic leap.

Adapting is essential in AI-driven development

The tooling is here. The platform has evolved. After eight years with Kentico, I can say with confidence that the gap between the old way and the new never has been wider, and it's only growing.

I choose to adapt. And with Kentico building the right integrations to support that journey, the path forward has never been clearer.