Reconnect 2026: Agentic Development Comes to FileMaker
Updated: 2 days ago
'That's not a Claude problem. That's a context problem.' ~ my good-self, on stage at Reconnect.
Reconnect 2026 has wrapped in Christchurch, New Zealand. More than 120 Claris FileMaker Developers, one stream, two days, and agentic development on the program from the Claris keynote onwards. I personally presented two slots: a Claris Partner Showcase straight after the keynote, and my own session the next morning.
Reconnect 2026 at a glance:
What: the in-person Claris FileMaker developer conference in the Asia Pacific region
Where: Christchurch, New Zealand
When: 15–16 October 2026
Who: more than 120 Claris FileMaker Developers, in one stream
My sessions: a Claris Partner Showcase, and Train Your FileMaker AI Agent
Organisers: from Melbourne, Sydney, Brisbane and Christchurch
Next year: Sydney
In this post:
The Claris Partner Showcase at Reconnect 2026
On Thursday 15 October I joined Rex Serrao and Stefano Morandotti on stage as a special guest in the Claris session, 'Inside Agentic Development for FileMaker'. My part was an eight-minute Partner Showcase, straight after the Claris keynote.
The case was a student database, twenty years in production. Its administrators now need to work in a browser, through WebDirect. One click on Print letters runs a script in one file, which calls a script in another, which reaches Enter Preview Mode. WebDirect doesn't support it, and nothing on the button tells you. With Claris ADT reading the live file, the plan came from the solution itself, and all 218 scripts matched an independent Save as XML export.
Analysis first has always been my discipline. With ADT it becomes a conversation: I ask, and the Agent answers with more depth, and far faster, than I could alone.
Train Your FileMaker AI Agent
On Friday 16 October at 9am I presented my own session: how to give Claude the context it needs to write FileMaker code that works. What a Skill is, writing Skills that reference live FileMaker documentation, and versioning a Skill library.
An online version is now a free class in the CadenceUX Academy: Train Your FileMaker AI Agent. Ten lessons, then an open book quiz with a PDF certificate.
The Organisers From Four APAC Cities
Reconnect doesn't happen by itself. The organisers come from four APAC cities: Melbourne, Sydney, Brisbane and Christchurch. Every year they bring this Community into one room, and every year it's worth the trip. Thank you, all of you.
And of course, there'd be no conference without attendees. A big thank you to our international Reconnect family: we have a great, solid community!
Why Agentic Will Energise the FileMaker Community
Agentic Development will energise our Claris FileMaker Community. It hands every Developer a reason to open their oldest solution and ask it a question they've never been able to answer quickly. FileMaker stays the foundation, and the Agent makes the plan fast and precise.
Best practice matters more, not less. An Agent doesn't replace best practice. It amplifies it.
Claris has now expanded access to Agentic Development for FileMaker with its developer preview. The announcement quotes me on what it changes for a Developer: 'a greater percentage of your time to be spent on problem-solving, rather than coding.'
The Work Behind a Talk on AI
A talk on AI starts ageing while you write it. The tools change under you, the preview changes under you, and what was true in August needs checking again in October.
Example: My session deck went through more than twenty saved versions, from August to the morning I presented. The last one was saved at 6am on the day.
That's the job. Every claim on a slide about AI has to survive the week it's presented in.
How Claude Works With Me on the Keynote, Website and Blog
I don't build the talk, the site and the posts as three separate jobs anymore. Claude works across all three with me, and each job runs through a Skill I built for it: the same approach the Academy teaches.
Keynote. Claude reads the deck and its presenter notes. Through a Keynote Skill it restyles slides, retags lesson sections and rewrites presenter notes, then checks each change against an exported image of the slide.
Website. Through the Wix connector, Claude builds the Academy lesson pages, the quiz and the code behind the home page cards. Blog posts land as unpublished drafts.
Blog. A writing-style Skill holds my voice: Australian English, a hook the Takeaway returns to, and real examples only. Every draft runs a self-audit before I see it.
The deck is the source, and everything else follows it.
Example: When I added two slides on harness options to the DigFM deck, Claude updated the Academy lessons and wrote the matching quiz questions the same day. This post started the same way, from my Claris showcase brief and the deck's own file history.
Claude does the co-ordination. I make the calls: nothing goes live on the site without my yes.
This is Knowledge Delegation in practice. The perishable pile goes to Claude: the Wix API shapes, the Keynote scripting, the spacing my blog uses. The durable pile stays with me: what the talk says, whether every claim is true, and whether it's ready to go live. Reviewing the Agent is the new code review, and that holds for a slide deck as much as a script.
DigFM: the Extended, Recorded Version
On 16 November I will present an 'extended' version of Train Your FileMaker AI Agent at DigFM, and as with all DigFM sessions, the presentation will be recorded.
It's not my first DigFM session. In October 2022 I presented 'DX/DU: The Developer Experience / Down Under', and the recording is still on YouTube: watch DX/DU.
Four years on, the Developer Experience has a new partner: the Agent. Same Community, a new chapter.
Takeaway
Reconnect 2026 was the year agentic development arrived in the room. The Agent is fast, and the solution answers back. The context is still ours to give. That's not a Claude problem. That's a context problem, and it's the one worth solving.
See you in Sydney for Reconnect 2027.
More to come . . .
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