Hi, I’m Daryll. I build WordPress systems that begin with the why.
Readable architecture, thoughtful processes and DevEx tools that make engineering feel calmer and more predictable.
I’m a staff engineer working on large, long-lived WordPress and editorial systems.
I care about turning business problems into clear plans, shaping architecture that’s safe to change, and helping engineers work with more confidence and less friction in their day-to-day work.
Most of my work sits at the intersection of architecture, developer experience and AI-assisted engineering. I’m especially interested in how structure and clarity make AI more useful, and how small improvements in DevEx can completely change how a team feels.
Latest writing
The most recent things I have published. Mostly deep dives. Occasionally, notes and experiments.
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Why AI Writes Better TypeScript and How You Can Make PHP Play Along
AI writes TypeScript with calm confidence but feels far less predictable in PHP. After digging into why, I realised the difference had nothing to do with the model and everything to do with structure. TypeScript gives AI clear signals. PHP often gives it none. In this post, I break down why that matters and how…
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Why Engineers Will Spend More Time Shaping Problems Than Writing Code
When I stopped treating AI like a magic code machine and started treating it like a product manager and a junior engineer, everything got easier. Clearer requirements. Faster delivery. Much calmer engineering.
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Why Code Reviews Break Down, and How to Bring Back Calm
On a long-running headless multisite project, our code review process slowly spiralled out of control, with 100+ open PRs, slow turnarounds, constant context-switching, and frustrated engineers. We fixed it by reframing how we think about reviews, creating a clear hierarchy, and making readability the foundation. This is the story of how we made code reviews…
How I think about engineering
I have spent most of my career working on WordPress at scale. Multisites. Legacy codebases that need to evolve. Editorial teams with sharp workflows. My focus is on the foundations that let those systems change safely.
I am interested in how AI fits into that work in a real, practical way, not as a toy, but as a teammate that handles the repetitive glue while humans shape the architecture and constraints.
Some principles I try to work by
- Clarity beats cleverness. If I cannot explain it, we should not ship it.
- Structure reduces ambiguity. Typed inputs and outputs make AI and humans both more reliable.
- Developer experience multiplies output. Friction is a tax on every project.
- Calm systems win. Good architecture makes change boring instead of risky.
- AI works best with guardrails. Use it where patterns are clear, and feedback loops are tight.
Things I have built or maintained
A few of the tools and libraries I have worked on over the years. Some started as client needs. Most exist to make engineers lives a little easier.
- Safe SVG – A WordPress plugin that lets you safely upload SVG files to the media library by sanitising inline SVG content. View on wordpress.org →
- SVG sanitiser library – A PHP library that strips unsafe elements and attributes from SVGs so that teams can rely on vector assets without worrying about security surprises. View on GitHub →
- wp-scaffold – A starting point for modern WordPress projects, with structure, tooling, and patterns that aim to reduce friction for teams working across multiple codebases. View on GitHub →
- DevEx and CLI tooling experiments – Internal tools for commands, scaffolding, and AI assisted code generation that try to bake good defaults into the everyday developer workflow.