Claris Agentic Development Toolkit heralds new dawn for FileMaker
Ben Fletcher • 6 November 2026
For 40 years the Claris FileMaker platform has a proven track record for custom application development as a low-code platform, with most of its advantage coming from the tight integration of a graphical UI builder, script engine and database engine all being tightly integrated to provide a unified experience, just as we would expect from any product from its parent company, Apple.
Arguably the biggest paradigm change in software development has been heralded by the rise of agentic coding - making use of AI agents to develop from scratch, debug and enhance software under the direction of a developer. A result of this is that major software companies are betting that the future lies with machine originated and human curated rather than humans hand crafting code from scratch.
How does this paradigm effect FileMaker customers?
Claris are currently offering a preview release of an agentic development kit (ADK) enhanced version of FileMaker so that Claris Partners and developers can test and provide feedback ahead of a potential Feb 2027 production release version. Since this is the largest change to the platform since the release of FileMaker 7 back in 2024 and will likely be much more impactful, Claris are rightly being thorough about testing to make the approach robust for when the production version is released.
Based on our initial evaluation of ADK, many development tasks that were previously cost and effort prohibitive are likely to be order of magnitude cheaper to build with this agentic technology and likewise some tasks which were practical impossible will become possible. Just some of the potential uses of this technology include:
- Automating the conversion of database specifications into prototype apps.
- Rapid identification of potential causes of bugs in large and complex systems.
- Leveraging agentic builds of Web UIs based on web viewers within FileMaker as a faster way of optimising interfaces to be modern in look & feel and mobile responsive.
- Generating developer or end user documentation straight from an existing FileMaker database.
- Integrating FileMaker with complex 3rd party APIs.
- Reduce the IT Dept overhead of needing to install FileMaker Pro on the desktop, needing Terminal Services or Remote Desktop for satellite offices, by moving to richer Web UIs running under FileMaker WebDirect.
Getting ready for FileMaker Agentic Development
Agentic development tools will require access to the latest FileMaker platform releases as well as subscriptions or tokens from leading AI model providers such as Anthropic or OpenAI. The exact model perquisites have not been confirmed yet, but undoubtedly other private, open source and open weight model providers will likely be added based on development community and customer demand.
The simplest step in preparation, is to make sure you have already upgraded to FileMaker 2026. You may also wish to consider moving to a cloud hosting environment if you are still running with legacy on premised infrastructure. The approach to delivering custom applications agentically is much faster in terms of development, but does require a more rigorous and disciplined approach to development than has historically been associated with smaller customers of the FileMaker platform and this new approach does benefits from formalise processes separate servers for develop, QA and production environments. While this has always been the gold standard, it now becomes all the more critical with this new development technology.
Need help to upgrade to FileMaker 26 or planning for moving to agentic development?
At DataTherapy, we specialise in supporting and upgrading legacy FileMaker apps as well as building new custom apps to leverage the latest features of the Claris FileMaker 26 platform & AI technology. Whether you need training, support, cloud hosting or are ready to go all-in on developing a new app from scratch—we can help.
✅ Certified Claris FileMaker Developers
✅ UK-based team of full-time professionals
✅ Platinum Claris Partner
✅ Experts in secure, on-premise and private cloud deployment of FileMaker
📞 Contact us today for a free consultation and discover how local FileMaker can help your team move faster, work smarter, and stay fully in control of your data.
Alternatives to Claris Studio now that it is EOL.
Claris has kindly published clips profiling our work on their social media feed and can be found on the following platforms: LinkedIn Facebook Instagram X YouTube Threads Our full case study can be found here .
Upgrade to Claris FileMaker 2026 with confidence. Learn key migration considerations, AI features, compatibility issues and best practices.
FileMaker Server 26 Enhancements Multiple SASE Processes - FileMaker Server 26 allows you to configure the number of active process in the Server Side Script Engine (SASE), the upper limit being determined by the hardware in use. This allows for more server side processes to occur in parallel - for automated imports, sync and nightly data transformations which need high throughput. Auto-Restart - FileMaker Server's Web Publishing Engine (WPE), OData and Data API services now monitor and detect abnormal termination events and restart automatically on a crash. Export Field Contents on Server - No additional 3rd party plugins or work arounds to automate server side document generation and export to server side folders. FileMaker Go 26 for iOS Enhancements Additional support for iOS hardware and locale support. Core Platform Security Enhancements Additional corporate security enhanced with support for OpenSSL 3.5 LTS, Apache Tomcat 10.1.44+, Windows Server 2025 certification, and full macOS 2026 compatibility. Need help to upgrade to FileMaker 26? At DataTherapy, we specialise in supporting and upgrading legacy FileMaker apps as well as building new custom apps to leverage the latest features of the Claris FileMaker 26 platform. Whether you need training, support, cloud hosting or are ready to go all-in on developing a new app from scratch—we can help. ✅ Certified Claris FileMaker Developers ✅ UK-based team of full-time professionals ✅ Platinum Claris Partner ✅ Experts in secure, on-premise and private cloud deployment of FileMaker 📞 Contact us today for a free consultation and discover how local FileMaker can help your team move faster, work smarter, and stay fully in control of your data.
As well as the customer facing UI enhancements, FileMaker 26 has a number of 'under the hood' tool enhancements for long standing developers: Enhanced Inspector - layout controls dynamically adjust based on the object type, reading the cognitive load of navigating the Layout Mode tools for new and veteran developers alike. Control Field Entry by Calculation - field level editablity is now controlled by a boolean calculation that evaluates at runtime based on any developer defined logic. This makes building role based editing or workflow based record locking much easier to implement. Sort Custom Functions with Folders - this now is applied at an independent folder level, making it much easier to work with distributing a shared function library that needs to display in a specific order. Set Layout Zoom by Calculation - the UI zoom can now be scripted to any decimal percentage, making it easier to make layouts which adapt to a specific user or device screen size requirements. Draco Catalog - FileMaker 2026 now includes a persistent catalog which is independent from the application data which can be used for storing JavaScript modules and persistent solution-level settings (app versions, feature flags and environment identifiers). PDF Script Workspace - dedicated script steps have been added for PDF manipulation which makes the generation of multi-page reports assembled from different layouts both using FileMaker Pro client and via FileMaker Server. Need help to upgrade to FileMaker 26? At DataTherapy, we specialise in supporting and upgrading legacy FileMaker apps as well as building new custom apps to leverage the latest features of the Claris FileMaker 26 platform. Whether you need training, support, cloud hosting or are ready to go all-in on developing a new app from scratch—we can help. ✅ Certified Claris FileMaker Developers ✅ UK-based team of full-time professionals ✅ Platinum Claris Partner ✅ Experts in secure, on-premise and private cloud deployment of FileMaker 📞 Contact us today for a free consultation and discover how local FileMaker can help your team move faster, work smarter, and stay fully in control of your data.
FileMaker 2025 already added significant enhancements to leverage AI and FileMaker 26 continues to double down on this: Field Annotation A new AI tab is available within the Field Options to define a JSON calculation as the field's annotation which is used in Export dialogs, sort dialogs and most essential in Data Definition Language (DDL) for use in AI. Save as XML & Solution Upgrade Tool FileMaker Pro 26 can now save a copy of your solution as a .xml formatted text file and the enhanced Solution Upgrade Tool can now read XML input and create brand new .fmp12 files or patch existing ones. This is a huge boon for Claris FileMaker developers - it means that Claris FileMaker developers can now use AI tools to generate XML which can then be used to create real production ready FileMaker solutions. Additionally, traditional version controlling scheme and using diff tools to compare XML outputs between production and development releases can be compared. Google Gemini Support Gemini is now supported as a native option in FileMaker script steps making it substantially easier to integrate with Google Cloud and Gemini if that is your preferred AI backend provider. PDF Text Extraction The native ExtractTextfromPDF() function introduced in FileMaker 2025, can now be used to process OCR (scanned) PDFs and not just text-layer PDFs. This again reduces the reliance and cost of using additional 3rd party plugins, APIs or AI tools for text extraction. Need help to upgrade to FileMaker 26? At DataTherapy, we specialise in supporting and upgrading legacy FileMaker apps as well as building new custom apps to leverage the latest AI features of the Claris FileMaker 26 platform. Whether you need training, support, cloud hosting or are ready to go all-in on developing a new app from scratch—we can help. ✅ Certified Claris FileMaker Developers ✅ UK-based team of full-time professionals ✅ Platinum Claris Partner ✅ Experts in secure, on-premise and private cloud deployment of FileMaker 📞 Contact us today for a free consultation and discover how local FileMaker can help your team move faster, work smarter, and stay fully in control of your data.
The new Claris FileMaker 2026 release includes enhancements to user experience and accessibility: WebDirect Accessibility & Platform updates WebDirect now includes better screen reader support for the visually impaired or motor disabilities: semantic HTML is now correctly labelled and there is improved focus management for modal dialogs, portals and pop-ups. This is a critical requirement for any public-facing WebDirect solutions where accessibility is a legal obligation. WebDirect in FileMaker 2026 now runs on JDK 21 - removing a barrier to corporate environments that have strict or have deprecated older versions of JDK in their infrastructure. Japanese Calendar Support Native Japanese era-based (gengō) calendar system support has been added in FileMaker 2026— drop-down date pickers now display and accept dates in the Japanese calendar across all. This is critical to Japanese solutions where there s a legal mandate for governmental and official documents to use era-based dating. Need help to upgrade to FileMaker 2026? At DataTherapy, we specialise in supporting and upgrading legacy FileMaker apps as well as building new custom apps to leverage the latest features of the Claris FileMaker 26 platform. Whether you need training, support, cloud hosting or are ready to go all-in on developing a new app from scratch—we can help. ✅ Certified Claris FileMaker Developers ✅ UK-based team of full-time professionals ✅ Platinum Claris Partner ✅ Experts in secure, on-premise and private cloud deployment of FileMaker 📞 Contact us today for a free consultation and discover how local FileMaker can help your team move faster, work smarter, and stay fully in control of your data.
The new Claris FileMaker 2026 release includes two highly significant enhancements to business continuity and disaster recovery: FileMaker Standby Server FileMaker Server 2026 can be paired with a second 'hot spare' server which is always ready to become the primary, with failover only taking a few minutes to implement. This means that a hardware failure of the primary server server can be quickly recovered from by promoting the secondary server. Previously, synchronising data between a primary and fail over server would have required additional software adding complexity and cost to a FileMaker Server deployment. FileMaker Server 2026 now includes this service as standard, making it much more economic to implement. The fail over server does not have to be running on the same OS platform or network and so you can run a hybrid on-premises + cloud or split across different cloud data centres or providers for added robustness. FileMaker Server Remote Backup Claris now offer a cloud storage backup service integrated directly with FileMaker Server which can be bolted onto existing FileMaker Server installations (on-premises or running on private cloud). While many private managed hosting providers such as DataTherapy have implemented cloud backups as part of their standard service, FileMaker customers with on-premises infrastructure would often struggle to implement robust backup solutions without dedicated virtualisation teams and additional 3rd party backup software. Again, this provides an economic option for FileMaker customers to consider as part of their disaster recovery strategy. Need help to upgrade to FileMaker 2026? At DataTherapy, we specialise in supporting and upgrading legacy FileMaker apps as well as building new custom apps to leverage the latest features of the Claris FileMaker 2026 platform. Whether you need training, support, cloud hosting or are ready to go all-in on developing a new app from scratch—we can help. ✅ Certified Claris FileMaker Developers ✅ UK-based team of full-time professionals ✅ Platinum Claris Partner ✅ Experts in secure, on-premise and private cloud deployment of FileMaker 📞 Contact us today for a free consultation and discover how local FileMaker can help your team move faster, work smarter, and stay fully in control of your data.
Upgrade to Claris FileMaker 2026 now! DataTherapy are pleased to announce that Claris FileMaker 2026 managed private cloud hosting packages are immediately available on both Windows and Linux platforms via FileMaker Host . DataTherapy can provide scalable, managed FileMaker packages for businesses of all size. Full details of all of our packages can be found here . Why choose DataTherapy for Claris FileMaker Hosting? Hassle-Free Hosting We handle everything – from setup to ongoing maintenance, so you can focus on your business, not server management. Personalised UK-Based Support Speak to real FileMaker experts, not call centres. All our servers are fully managed by our in-house team. Secure, High Performance Infrastructure Our hosting is fine-tuned for optimal database performance and is hosted on Amazon Web Services (AWS). Our servers are scalable, provide enterprise-grade security, and we handle backups to keep your data safe. No Long-Term Contracts Flexible quarterly billing options with a free 2-week trial for maximum flexibility without long-term commitments. Fully Customised Hosting Tailored for your Business We understand FileMaker inside out. Whether you’re running a small business system or a large enterprise solution we can provide the perfect plan based on your user and performance needs. If you need additional information, or would like to arrange a free trial of any of our packages then please don’t hesitate to contact our team .
What is new in FileMaker 26? The Claris FileMaker 26 (version 26 - they have officially skipped versions 23-25 so that the version number aligns with the year of release ) Platform for is now available as of 10th June 2026 and demonstrates Claris’ on-going commitment to embrace transformative technologies. Whether you’re a long-time FileMaker user or just exploring how to modernise your internal systems, this latest release includes expanded AI capabilities including Google Gemini support, major server reliability improvements, and significant accessibility advances. Here’s what you need to know: AI capabilities Google Gemini support: Adds Gemini to FileMaker's growing list of supported AI providers, giving developers greater flexibility when building intelligent applications. Field and table annotations: Attach semantic meaning to fields and tables so AI models have richer context — improving the accuracy of natural language queries and LLM-generated insights. Metadata calculation functions: New functions including BaseTableComment and FieldAnnotation provide programmatic access to schema documentation, making AI-powered solutions easier to build and maintain entirely within FileMaker. Server reliability and infrastructure Automatic crash recovery: The Web Publishing Engine, OData service, and Data API now restart themselves after interruptions — reducing downtime without manual intervention. Multiple SASE processes: Support for multiple Server-Side Script Engine processes improves throughput and responsiveness under heavy workloads. Updated platform compatibility: Full support for macOS 26, Windows Server 2025, OpenSSL 3.5 LTS, and Apache Tomcat 10.1.44+ ensures deployments stay secure and supported in modern IT environments. Accessibility WebDirect improvements: Updated semantic HTML, improved screen reader compatibility, better focus management, and ARIA compliance — a significant step toward WCAG 2.1 compliance. No redesign required: Existing layouts benefit from accessibility improvements automatically, lowering the barrier for partners serving clients with compliance requirements. What benefits doe this bring to new and existing FileMaker customers? Build and deliver faster — A smarter development environment with context-aware tooling and scripting improvements means less time on layout friction and more time building solutions our clients love. Lead with AI — Google Gemini support, field annotations, and native metadata functions give us the tools to build genuinely intelligent apps — without third-party platforms or custom integrations. Reduce client downtime — Automatic service recovery means enterprise deployments keep running even when issues arise. Serve every user — Built-in accessibility improvements help clients meet WCAG 2.1 and Section 508 requirements, opening doors to new government, healthcare, and enterprise customers. Grow with a future-ready platform — Compatibility with the latest operating systems, security standards, and AI providers means the solutions we build today are designed to last. Ready to upgrade your business to FileMaker 26? The new benefits of FileMaker 26 mean you can layer power AI into existing solutions without any major redevelopment work. Support for natural language input allow smarter and more intuitive applications to improve your business decision making. At DataTherapy , we specialise in building custom apps for business using the Claris FileMaker platform. Whether you need training, support, cloud hosting or are ready to go all-in on developing a new app from scratch—we can help. ✅ Certified Claris FileMaker Developers ✅ UK-based team of full-time professionals ✅ Platinum Claris Partner ✅ Experts in secure, on-premise and private cloud deployment of FileMaker 📞 Contact us today for a free consultation and discover how local FileMaker can help your team move faster, work smarter, and stay fully in control of your data.
