Looking back at Neos Sprint Dresden October 2025

The sprint started as usual on day zero - the Sunday - first with our laptops in the trains and later we met in the Dresdener Neustadt to have some Czech beers and dinner. It was great that we all got together a last time in the year 2025 for a full week. During the first days we had a surprisingly high number of twenty participants - it's so good seeing new people involved and also regulars always coming and helping!

Topics

With that much people and energy we went into our first topic: Discussing the "Future of Neos & Flow". During that discussion we tried to get a good idea about where do we think Neos and Flow should evolve in a technical way but also how we can still get people exited with Neos today. If you are familiar with a Neos sprint you will know that this was not the first big discussion on the sprint and that we always try to reinvent ourselves. Other heavily discussed parts were a new Neos References editor, improved Neos 9 CR security and Flows proxy-building.

Neos 9 new Reference(s) Editor - see below ;)
Related to the new content repository
- Improve support for security / permissions
- New maintenance module
- Performance benchmark tracer
- Bugfixes, especially in combination with the UI
The Neos 9.1 "Paper Bin" feature for content recovery & cleanup
The Neos 9.1 new inline editing & new link editor
Flow annotation ORM support
Neos Marketing & Neos conference award preparations

Community effort: A new Reference(s) Editor

The reference editor allows to connect the current node with one or more nodes. So far this was handled via a search bar inside the input box where nodes to link to where shown by title and icon. These search results can be confusing and troubling when there are multiple nodes with the same title and one just has to experiment to find the correct one. We believe the current Ui is a little too simplistic for its purpose. Furthermore with Neos 9 references also can technically have their own properties but the Neos Ui yet has to learn how to edit those properties.

Neos offers with the document tree a good visual to navigate the content of the site. In the Archaeopteryx, which is an enhanced link editor plugin, it is used to better find a document node for a link. This link editor is now incorporated into Neos 9.1 and inspired by the use of the document tree there our goal was to create a new references editor. (Thank you for the idea Sophia.) The new editor will allow to select nodes as references in the secondary editor. The node tree allows multiple selections and offers a search and filter functionally. All the set references are still shown in the inspector for overview and offer a possibility to edit their relation properties if any. After a lot of conceptual discussions - really lots of hours with almost everyone from the sprint *g - this is the concept we were fairly confident with.

In the week in Dresden we managed as a team to implement a first working draft. It's great that we got so many people exited and got so far. Special thanks to Laura, Niclas, Sabine and Sophia from the community!

As there are still many rough edges and work to do we would love help to finish the implementation. If you're interested write us in #neos-ui on slack.

Sneak peek into the new Ui:

Screenshot of reference editor — Select new node in secondary references editor via "New reference"

New faces new people ❤️

A perspective from Sabine from the community

When our team-lead first asked me if I was interested in going to a Neos Sprint, my first impulse was to say no. I have worked with Neos and Flow for nearly three years now, so I would say I am used to the framework. But the idea of meeting all the people actually working ON the framework and working with them was intimidating.

Still, I said yes because I like to learn new things and dive deeper into things one already knows.
And that was one aspect of what I experienced in Dresden at the sprint. I gained a deeper knowledge of the inner workings of Neos and Flow, which in turn helped me to better understand how to use them. I was also able to contribute to a bugfix and a project, which felt really awesome on my first sprint.

But the biggest takeaway for me was that (surprise) all the Neos Core folks and every other person there was genuinely nice and caring and really interested in helping newcomers to dive deeper into Neos Core Development. It really should not have come as a surprise knowing the Neos community where help is often only one Slack Request away. It was great working together with people who knew the framework by heart and were able to quickly point to the right places to start. And who enjoyed doing that and really took their time to answer our questions. It was also genuinely enjoyable company. Every evening a small group of people stayed a bit longer to chat and eat pizza (and drink good Dresden beer) or to go out to a restaurant and the occasional cocktail bar.

We also had a genuinely warm welcome by Sandstorm who hosted the sprint (special greetings to the two dogs always greeting us when we got coffee).
All in all, saying yes to this experience was a good decision and I am looking forward to seeing some people again at a future sprint or con!

A perspective from Sophia after joining the Neos core team

The first time I heard about Neos was in 2020. I had just started as an intern at queo GmbH and had more experience working as an editor with content management systems than I had as a developer. As such, I first saw Neos through the eyes of an editor and it didn't take long to decide that I really liked it. It's clean, intuitive and makes life as an editor so much easier.

What surprised me was how approachable the development side was. I was only just starting out as a developer, but soon enough I was building my first modules. Since then, I've worked on several different Neos projects within my company, attended quite a few community events broadened my knowledge.

When my colleague first asked me if I was interested in joining a Neos Sprint, I felt far from ready for it. Of course I was interested, but I didn't think I had the skills to participate in a meaningful way. But my colleague wouldn't have invited me if she didn't think it was a good idea, right?

Well, turns out she was more than right. Not only did I really enjoy it, it also gave me an opportunity to learn from the Neos experts, become more of a part of the community and get a deeper understanding of Neos.

When my first sprint was over, I couldn't wait to join the next one. Ever since, I've taken every chance I got to join sprints or contribution days. During those sprints, I contributed bugfixes and small features, but I found that the part I enjoy most is helping others. If there was someone who participated in the sprint or the contribution day for the first time, I always spent a good part of my time helping them to set up and take their first steps in contributing. But I was also hoping that these events would let me soak up enough knowledge that maybe one day I might be able to join the Neos core team. Spoiler: It happened much sooner than I would've ever expected.

When Christian approached me during the Dresden sprint and asked if I would be interested in becoming a core team member, I was absolutely thrilled. And proud that apparently, I must've done something right to get this opportunity so much sooner than expected.

Looking ahead, I want to continue sharing knowledge and helping other community members navigate their own Neos journeys. To this end, I'm also particularly interested in improving documentation and enhancing the editor experience. I do think that my background helps a lot here, but I'm also looking forward to learning about your thoughts, ideas and struggles. Feel free to reach out to me at any time!

A few more impressions

The Neos sprint attendees — The sprint attendees discussing a hot topic

Presentation of the new inline editing in Neos

Outgoing thanks

The sprint was a blast, thanks to all attendees and thank you for having us at Sandstorm! And especially Marika for organising the event.