AI Coding in FileMaker
The question is no longer if AI assisted coding will impact your work in FileMaker. The question is when you begin using it and how it shows up in your development process. That adoption may come from Claris through native features, from third party tools, or even from solutions you build yourself by using AI as part of your workflow to generate FileMaker code.
For those of us who have spent decades learning how to write code, this represents a significant shift. The value of manually composing code is decreasing, not because it is unimportant, but because AI can now generate functional code very quickly once it is given clear direction and constraints. The real value moves to defining the problem correctly and validating the results that AI produces.
AI is now capable of handling complex tasks, especially when it is allowed to access documentation, data, and external tools. Much of FileMaker development follows well understood patterns. Generating code is becoming a solvable problem. What remains critical is your ability to determine whether the generated code is correct, complete, maintainable, and appropriate for the business problem being solved.
As a result, the role of the FileMaker developer is evolving. The skills that matter most are architectural thinking, understanding data flow, validating edge cases, and ensuring performance and reliability. I now think of my role less as a coder and more as a software architect or business automation integrator.
How you create FileMaker solutions is going to change, especially if you have not yet used AI as part of your development process. In this video, we will look at how AI can be used to generate FileMaker code and what you may be experiencing in the very near future if you're not already there.
Comments
"I am speechless"
Love the smile Matt.
Our world, as developers, will never be the same.
My being speechless actually comes from using Cursor to compose an ever expanding solution to manage a REST solution (AWS API Gateway) I'm building for one of my own FileMaker solutions.
When I started coding it initially, I was both learning and coding the "slower" way. Slogging through docs and "hand-writing" the code. In the middle of last year I started using Cursor and in the most recent months, AI has been composing the bulk of the code in python/node and also helping to generate and fix FileMaker calcs.
The python/node code is used serverless, via AWS lambda scripts, and I can't explain how mind-blowing fast the models (currently Opus 4.5) are at creating comprehensive code.
Not only that, AI will code the parts that most developers will overlook and simply not do, in particular test-driven development. The AI actually writes the tests for you against the code that it also creates. I found myself being desperate for being able to do the same within FileMaker, but I can't.
This single biggest problem that FileMaker will face is a "lack of code exposure". In other code scenarios, the AI can see what it needs to see within your codebase - because it's simply looking at text files.
This is something I'll be addressing in future videos as there is no doubt in my mind at all that, our world as developers, will never be the same.
-- Matt Petrowsky - ISO FileMaker Magazine Editor
:)
That's why I started looking at Appsmith, because it allows us to utilize version control. Please Claris...
I am really excited about the training.
For me, it was shocking to hear that the "typing the code" way of development is going to disappear. Makes sense. Over the last 6-10 months, I have created many more things, but I also like to use AI to explain all the code.
Go watch this video
This is a video from a younger generation dev who works with React and more modern technologies. He's a popular YouTuber and was one of the reasons I started forcing myself to use Cursor to find projects outside of FileMaker to see what was happening in the rest of the tech world.
What is covered in the video I can personally attest to with actual personal experience.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xBM307YwVRw
-- Matt Petrowsky - ISO FileMaker Magazine Editor
helping hand
To be really helpful, why not make the prompt in the video available as a markdown file?
Sorry about the file.
I was so excited to push out the video that I forgot to attach the file.
-- Matt Petrowsky - ISO FileMaker Magazine Editor
Very honest
Hi Matt,
Brilliant and honest video, and I'll be honest too, I used AI almost exclusively now for coding ideas/help and for the very reasons you have highlighted in this video. I also use Replit for a customer web portal, I still use FileMaker for internal data processing and data housing in our company but Replit has been a revelation for the web portal, it literally created the AIP connection for me and built a modern sleek web portal so quickly, of course I had to tell it what to fetch and fix some of the relationships it built but even that was very easy, game changer for me and has made me far more productive. The main bottle neck now for me is code input into Filemaker which hopefully they will address in the next big release, if they don't well then I will have a decision to make.
Replit, Loveable, et al.
Keep in mind that Replit and others are wrappers around multiple AI tools. Always make sure you can get the source code out if you ever want to migrate. When using tools like Cursor or Claude Code you're working with AI on the code local to your machine. In this scenario you control the source.
This allows for things like version control and using effective review methods like merges and pull requests. While these concepts are not used within the world of FileMaker, when you start integrating outside code with FileMaker solutions they become a bit more essential as any evolving system will need to manage multiple aspects. Documentation, metrics, logging, maintenance, testing, continuous integration, dev/stage/prod workflows and other aspects are all things that even FileMaker developers should learn about.
FileMaker has an existential threat right now. They either move fast and integrate AI for their tooling (not talking about AI for data - which is where they have spent most of their time) or, in my opinion, they may suffer a strong migration out of the tool. AI tools that will generate UI (like Replit) will proliferate. This means FileMaker's once strong competitive advantage of an easy-to-use UI builder (aka Layout Mode) may be fading fast. As you say, "[We] will have a decision to make."
-- Matt Petrowsky - ISO FileMaker Magazine Editor
Video Download Not Working
Great video. I can't wait to dig in and give it a try on a project I'm about to get started on. Unfortunately, all of the Video Downloads options above fail with a "Sorry we're having a little trouble" message from Vimeo. The attachment download worked fine.
Paul Davis
Ultra Golden Software LLC
Refreshed the links
I've refreshed the links so they should download. The cache likely had stale links.
-- Matt Petrowsky - ISO FileMaker Magazine Editor
MBS Copy/paste xml
Matt, might be useful to viewers, but from version 15.4, MonkeyBread lets you copy items like layouts, scripts, and fields as hidden XML on the clipboard, which normally can’t be pasted into a text editor. MBS exposes this XML by copying it into the text clipboard so it can be pasted elsewhere. It also does the reverse, detecting valid FileMaker XML in the text clipboard and converting it so FileMaker can paste it back normally.
Allan McDonald
Fundamental Media