Giorgio Alfredo Pagano

I'm a Drupal developer: I build custom modules and solutions with a spec-driven agentic development workflow. I've worked with Drupal since 2014, and on drupal.org I've gone by @sjpagan (opens in a new tab) since 2015. I look after four public projects: AI Disclosure, Native Observability, DOC to HTML and Voxtrama. The three most recent come from the years I spent building services for Italian public bodies, where I learned to tell people how a service is made and where their data ends up.

What I do with Drupal

I build websites and web services with Drupal, and I write the modules that are missing. My everyday work is content modelling, configuration management, migrations, decoupled architectures and custom modules.

Drupal treats content structure as a contract: content types, fields, roles and publishing workflows live in configuration. I keep that configuration in the repository next to the code and review it in every merge request, like any other change.

AI Disclosure: my contribution to the Drupal AI Initiative

AI Disclosure is the Drupal module that records, for every piece of content and every translation, how much AI contributed to it, and shows that to readers with the official European Commission icons. It started in the Drupal AI Initiative from a plan by @marcus_johansson (opens in a new tab): I took over development, opened the project on drupal.org and write the code. I am its owner, and Marcus and @joevagyok (opens in a new tab) are co-maintainers.

The module is for editorial teams that have to comply with Article 50 of the EU AI Act, and it works out for each item whether a label is required. It is used by 70 sites (Drupal.org, as of 10 Nov 2026). The Drop Times covered it twice, on Article 50 labelling (opens in a new tab) and on audio and video labels (opens in a new tab).

Every page on this site carries the AI Disclosure panel below the text. This page states that it was written with AI assistance and reviewed by me, and the figures on it are checked against the sources listed below.

How the module came about is on the AI Disclosure project page. How Article 50(4) applies to a Drupal site is covered in a separate article.

Native Observability: measuring Drupal from the inside

Native Observability traces every request to a Drupal site with a correlation ID, records execution spans, cache activity, queries and outgoing HTTP calls, and exports to OpenTelemetry and Prometheus. I wrote it to find out which hook slows a page down without wiring an external APM into every environment.

It supports Drupal 10 and 11 on PHP 8.2 or later, its stable releases are covered by the Drupal security advisory policy, and it is used by 32 sites (Drupal.org, as of 10 Nov 2026). More on the Native Observability project page. Native Observability was featured on Talking Drupal (opens in a new tab), as Module of the Week in episode #547, and in The Drop Times (opens in a new tab).

Voxtrama: the audio stays on your computer

Voxtrama is an open source application that transcribes meetings, lectures and interviews in Docker, on the machine of whoever recorded them, and writes a summary in which every point quotes the sentence and the minute it came from. The code is on GitHub under the Apache 2.0 licence.

It comes from the same care for data that public sector work left me with: a work recording holds people's voices and decisions, and the safest place to process it is the computer of the person who made it. The path the audio takes, step by step, is on the Voxtrama project page.

My path with Drupal

The projects I built for public bodies stay confidential: on this page I describe the method behind them.

What working for the public sector taught me

People who use a public service can't go elsewhere: whoever needs a certificate has that one website. That is where the three things I bring to every project come from.

• Accessibility: it decides whether a service exists for everyone or only for some people.
• Transparency about content: citizens should know who wrote a page and with which tools, and AI Disclosure turns that into data.
• Data kept close: identities, documents and recordings belong as close as possible to whoever is responsible for them, which is how Voxtrama is built.

How I work: spec first, decisions on record, measurements

I write the spec before the code. Every change starts from a document that says why it is made, what it changes and how to check it is done. AI Disclosure started from a sixteen-step plan published in the Drupal AI Initiative, and I have already closed ten of those steps.

I keep decisions on record. Architectural choices go into a dated log, together with the alternatives I weighed. While writing the AI Disclosure project page I found that this site declared AI use once for two languages: the fix and the reason for it are on that page.

I measure before I claim. A measured number carries more weight than a plausible hunch. I measured on my own server how much Native Observability slows Drupal down, and the method is in the article on the measurement.

Passions

I fly FPV drones: the headset shows the flight from the drone's camera, and every session takes quick reflexes and careful tuning of motors, props and radio. I 3D print with a Bambu Lab and a Prusa Core One L with INDX, Prusa's tool changer that handles several materials and colours in a single print. On Instagram I keep a profile for each passion:

• FPV flights: @lowflyfpv (opens in a new tab)
• 3D prints: @lowfly_stampa3d (opens in a new tab)
• Street photography, an archive of shots: @sjpagan (opens in a new tab)

Where to find me

• Modules, releases and contributions: @sjpagan (opens in a new tab) on drupal.org
• Code outside drupal.org, Voxtrama included: @sjpagan (opens in a new tab) on GitHub
• Work history: @giorgioalfredopagano (opens in a new tab) on LinkedIn
• To write to me: the Contact page

Sources

All sources were checked on 11 October 2026. Usage figures are refreshed from drupal.org: if you spot a difference, drupal.org is right.

• sjpagan's profile on drupal.org (opens in a new tab): membership, maintained projects, companies. Primary source.
• Kelyon on drupal.org (opens in a new tab): supporting organisation of my first modules. Primary source.
• LinkedIn profile (opens in a new tab): roles with their dates and individual membership of the Drupal Association. Primary source.
• DOC to HTML on drupal.org (opens in a new tab): project created in January 2017, releases and compatibility. Primary source.
• AI Disclosure on drupal.org (opens in a new tab): creation, maintainers, releases, sites using it. Primary source.
• Module plan in the Drupal AI Initiative (opens in a new tab): the sixteen steps and the ones closed. Primary source.
• Native Observability on drupal.org (opens in a new tab): creation, compatibility, security advisory policy, sites using it. Primary source.
• Voxtrama on GitHub (opens in a new tab): licence and first release. Primary source.