README

Varbase AI SEO

An opt-in Drupal recipe that generates the SEO title and SEO description of Blog posts and Utility pages with AI: when a node is saved, and in bulk over existing content.

On Varbase those two fields already drive every text meta tag through metatag.metatag_defaults.node (from varbase_seo_base):

Tag	Source
`<title>`	`[node:field_seo_title\\|node:title] \\| [site:name]`
`description`	`[node:field_seo_description\\|node:field_description]`
`og:title`, `twitter:title`	`[node:field_seo_title\\|node:title]`
`og:description`, `twitter:description`	`[node:field_seo_description\\|node:field_description]`

So filling the two fields fills six tags, with no second metatag field and no LLM call at page render. Configuration only, no custom code.

Generalised from a client project's recipe, with one behaviour fixed (see "Every path is guarded").

What it ships

Config	Purpose
`ai_automators.ai_automator.node.{blog,page}.field_seo_{title,description}.bulk`	the four prompts, as action workers
`eca.eca.varbase_ai_seo_generate_metatags`	runs them on save, in bulk and on request, behind one guard
`views.view.varbase_ai_seo`	Content → AI SEO meta tags (`/admin/content/ai-seo-metatags`), the bulk screen

Plus administer ai_automator for site_admin and seo_admin, so the people who own SEO can tune the prompts. Fields, form displays and metatag defaults are NOT shipped, and no content type is added: they come from the site's own Varbase install (the metatag defaults from varbase_seo_base).

How generation is triggered

Path	Trigger	Notes
On save	`content_entity:presave` for `node blog` / `node page`	fills only empty fields, in the same save
Bulk, both fields (preferred)	VBO action AI: SEO title and description (guarded)	saves each node once
Bulk, one field	VBO actions AI: SEO title (blog, bulk) etc.	the plain automators, no guard
On request	`content_entity:custom` with `event_id: generate_seo_metatags`	for code, other models, integrations

overwrite: false everywhere: an editor's own wording is never replaced, and a filled field costs no AI call on later saves. Bulk batch_size is 1, because each row is a live LLM call.

Every path is guarded

The guard is eca_entity_field_value_empty on field_content, negated: a node with an empty body is skipped, rather than given a meta title invented from its title.

The client recipe guarded only the ECA path and filled on save with plain worker_type: direct automators. Tested here, a Utility page saved with an empty body came back with "A test page on the Varbase Demo 1 site, used to check how the main content field is rendered…": invented. So on save now also goes through the ECA model and the direct automators are gone. The per-field bulk actions remain unguarded by design; use the guarded one.

Found on the way, for upstream (drupal/ai, ai_automators 1.4.7): an automator's status is ignored at save time. AiAutomatorEntityModifier::entityHasConfig() loads every automator for the bundle and runs it, whatever its enabled flag says, so "Disable" in the UI does not stop a direct automator. Proposed issue text: docs/upstream-ai-automators-status.md.

Compared with the Drupal AI demo's "AI SEO Optimizer"

The demo's Recommended AI Recipes tab lists drupal/ai_recipe_seo_optimizer. Checked 14 October 2026:

	`ai_recipe_seo_optimizer` 0.1.1	`varbase_ai_seo`
Release	0.1.1, 3 Dec 2025	—
Requires a dev release	yes, `drupal_cms_seo_tools: ^2.x-dev`	no
New modules	`custom_field`, `custom_field_ai`, `field_widget_actions`, `token_entity_render`	none beyond the Varbase AI stack
Title + description	yes, per field, via widget buttons	yes
SEO report / score	yes: `field_ai_seo_analysis`, a 12-section audit prompt over `[node:render:full]`	no: Varbase already scores with Yoast SEO, without an LLM
Content types	every bundle (`createForEachIfNotExists`)	Blog post, Utility page
Bulk	no	yes
Guard against thin content	no	yes

Per the Varbase AI layering rule (wrap only what is stable and security covered), it is not wrapped: a dev-release dependency, and four extra modules for what ai_automators already does. Worth taking from it, as a phase 2: Generate buttons on the field (field_widget_actions, security covered), so an editor sees a proposal before saving. That is what the demo shows; this recipe fills on save instead.

Context-aware

This recipe is "context-aware": it makes an AI feature that sits outside the agent pipeline follow the site's AI Context (Context Control Center: brand, editorial, safety).

Testing found that this context reaches only callers that ask for it. The same applies here: on ai_context 1.0.0-beta4 these automators get none. On ai_context 1.0.0-rc1 the Automator consumer type exists and routes on the ai_automator:id:{id} request tag, with push off by default.

Next step, documented, not implemented: once Varbase is on rc1, enable push for the four automators with an ai_context.consumers config action, the same shape the alt text recipe uses, one row per automator:

ai_context.consumers:
  simpleConfigUpdate:
    consumers.0:
      consumer_id: 'automator:node.blog.field_seo_title.bulk'
      type: automator
      push_enabled: true
      always_include: []
      never_include: []
      selection_mode: inherit
    # consumers.1 to consumers.3: the same for node.blog.field_seo_description.bulk,
    # node.page.field_seo_title.bulk and node.page.field_seo_description.bulk.

The consumer_id follows the rc1 Automator type (type automator, instance id = the automator id), read from AiContextConsumerTypeAutomator. Before doing it, check that ai_integration_eca_automators sends the ai_automator:id:{id} tag on the ECA path, and the row-index caveat the alt text recipe documents. Both recipes writing consumers.0 would collide; they need distinct rows, or the upstream ai_context change proposed there.

Requirements

A Varbase 11 site: the Blog post and Utility page content types with field_seo_title and field_seo_description (already on the site from its Varbase install), the metatag defaults (varbase_seo_base), and a default chat provider in ai.settings (varbase_ai_base). No key is stored in the recipe.

This recipe does not add content types, and does not require the recipes that do: neither under recipes: nor in composer.json. It only adds AI generation to content types the site already has (see the comment in recipe.yml).

Install and apply

ddev composer config --json extra.drupal-recipe-unpack.ignore '["drupal/varbase_ai_seo"]'
ddev composer require drupal/varbase_ai_seo:1.0.x-dev

# Recipes do not enforce config dependencies, so check the fields exist first.
ddev drush eval 'var_dump((bool) \Drupal\field\Entity\FieldConfig::loadByName("node", "blog", "field_seo_title"));'

ddev drush recipe ../recipes/varbase_ai_seo
ddev drush cr

Re-applying is safe. When the project already ignores other packages for recipe unpack, add to that list rather than replacing it.

Automated testing

GitLab CI on git.drupalcode.org (.gitlab-ci.yml) runs on every merge request and every push to 1.0.x, like the other Varbase AI recipes: composer validate and a lint of every YAML file.

The functional tests in tests/features (Playwright and Cucumber through @vardot/varbase-e2e) run against a site of your own: yarn install, then LAUNCH_URL=https://your-site.ddev.site yarn test.

Checked

14 October 2026, a local Varbase 11 site (Drupal 11.4, PHP 8.4, DDEV), default chat provider Anthropic, real model calls:

#	Check	Result
1	Applies three times in a row	pass
2	Blog post saved with body, empty SEO fields	title 50 chars, description 154 chars
3	Editor overrides the title, saves twice	override kept, 0 AI calls
4	Utility page saved with an empty body	both fields empty, 0 AI calls
5	Custom event on that empty page	untouched, 0 AI calls
6	Body added, saved	both fields filled, 2 AI calls
7	Event fired again on a filled node	unchanged, 0 AI calls
8	Rendered page	`<title>`, description, og and twitter tags all from the two fields
9	Bulk screen	guarded action listed first, 4 per-field actions after; 403 for anonymous

Not verified: the bulk actions run from a browser, multilingual output on this site, and the four Vardot site templates.

Related recipes

Recipe	What it does
Varbase AI Content Review Base	AI review agents for editorial quality and brand voice.

License

GPL-2.0-or-later. See LICENSE. Maintained by Vardot.

drupal / varbase_ai_seo

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