AI tools are everywhere, but very few of them actually solve the annoying, day-to-day problems that content teams face. At Specbee, one of those problems hit a little too close to home: internal linking. Every time the team published a blog, article, or case study, someone had to sift through older content, pick out keywords, and manually link to relevant pages. It was slow, inconsistent, and a poor time use, especially for people who’d rather be writing than data-mining.
This Drupal-native module uses contextual AI to scan your content, detect key phrases, and suggest internal links automatically. It’s designed to help content creators keep their sites connected and SEO-friendly without the grind. Whether you're a solo marketer or part of a larger editorial team, SmartLinker AI plugs directly into CKEditor and starts working right where you write. No detours. No new interfaces. Just relevant links where you need them, generated in seconds.
For Specbee, it wasn’t about jumping on the AI bandwagon—it was about fixing a problem their own team was sick of dealing with. And as Kazima Abbas, Sub Editor at The Drop Times, and Ben Peter Mathew, Community Manager at The Drop Times, found out during their conversation with Shefali Shetty, Director of Marketing at Specbee, this tool was built with intention—and for a broader purpose than just internal efficiency.
A Tool Born From Need, Not Novelty
Shefali began by walking us through the very practical frustrations their marketing team faced every week. The team was constantly creating a variety of content—technical blogs, non-technical explainers, case studies—all of which needed to be connected through internal links for SEO and usability. But manually finding those links? It was a chore.
Shefali Shetty
"Honestly, the real pain point started within our marketing team at Specbee. We regularly write and publish content on our website in the form of technical articles, non-technical pieces, and case studies. Since SEO plays an important role for us, we understand the importance and the value of internal linking. But the manual process of skimming through entire articles (sometimes over 2500 words), identifying keywords we might have written about elsewhere, and then linking them individually became tedious as our content output grew."
This wasn’t just an in-house inconvenience—they recognised it as a broader issue affecting editorial teams across the Drupal landscape.
Built the Drupal Way
When asked about the people behind SmartLinker AI, Shefali pointed to a small but seasoned team of developers: Suresh Prabhu, Ankitha Shetty, and Prashanth. Each of them brought deep Drupal experience to the project and collaborated closely to bring the idea to life.
She also explained that before SmartLinker AI, they had no internal automation for this. They relied entirely on manual linking or occasionally used tag-based related content blocks, but neither offered contextual accuracy or efficiency.
"As mentioned, we always relied on manual internal linking as there was no existing module that could help us with this exact problem. Of course, there are ways to tag your content and display related articles, but it still doesn’t solve the issue of manual internal linking. We needed a tool that could bring contextual intelligence to the process."
Building Smart Without Breaking Drupal
According to Shefali, designing an AI that could handle internal linking in an intelligent, non-repetitive way required both experimentation and a solid grasp of Drupal’s capabilities. One early hurdle: they initially leaned heavily on a large language model (LLM), only to realise it couldn't process or scale across all the content effectively.
"SmartLinker AI solves a seemingly simple problem - internal linking. However, making sure it delivered contextually intelligent results automatically meant that we had to leverage Drupal’s AI capabilities along with its search functionalities.
Like every other development cycle, we went through our own fair share of trials and errors. For example, initially we tried depending a lot on the LLM, but soon we realised that it could not handle a lot of data. This highlighted the need for a more robust and scalable solution, which led us to leverage the Drupal AI ecosystem - the AI Core framework, AI CKEditor, AI Search, and an open-source cloud vector database provider (Milvus)."
They built SmartLinker AI using Drupal's native AI tools and frameworks, ensuring it could integrate smoothly with CKEditor. Shefali emphasised how careful the team was to make sure the plugin wouldn’t conflict with existing site configurations.
"SmartLinker registers itself as an AI CKEditor plugin with a distinct namespace. It doesn’t override any native behaviour or third-party button. This means it operates in its own space within the CKEditor toolbar. It doesn’t destructively manipulate the raw HTML. SmartLinker inserts semantic anchor tags but respects existing formatting and styles. It works after WYSIWYG filters and formatting are applied"
Editorial Control Is Still in Your Hands
Shefali clarified how the tool fits into real-world editorial workflows. SmartLinker AI doesn’t replace the author’s judgment—it just does the tedious part faster. While link suggestions are automatically generated, authors can remove, replace, or edit them at any point before publishing.
"SmartLinker AI can be used at any stage of the editorial workflow. Once enabled in the AI CKEditor, content authors can automatically attach links by selecting the text and clicking on the Generate internal links option. Since the links are auto-generated, there is currently no option to review or approve each link. However, once all the links have been attached, authors can manually edit, remove or replace any of them as they would normally do in the editor and then save the changes.
At any point, you also have the option to add new links directly to the editor. Additionally, Site Admins have the choice to limit the content types to ensure only selective search is enabled for content authors."
Staying “Drupal-Pure”
When asked why they chose to keep SmartLinker AI native to Drupal rather than building it as a standalone SaaS, Shefali was firm—it was about values and practicality. Specbee lives and breathes Drupal, and a fully integrated tool just made more sense for both their clients and the community.
"With Specbee’s complete focus on Drupal, the decision to build SmartLinker AI purely on Drupal was non-negotiable, strategic and values-driven. Building a SaaS tool that bolts on with APIs might've been trendy, but it would've gone against everything our devs (and our clients) love about Drupal, like tight integration, granular control, and open-source freedom. Drupal’s AI ecosystem made our vision practical as we benefited from the ongoing community AI modules and conversations, shared tooling and standards, and so much more."
She added that the tool wasn’t just made for large enterprises. Even individual content creators or small marketing teams can benefit from the streamlined experience.
"As SmartLinker AI was primarily designed to address our internal marketing team’s pain point, the intended audience includes anyone from a marketing team across organisations, like content authors, editors, or even one-person marketing teams."
The Road Ahead
Looking forward, Shefali shared several updates already on their development roadmap. Among them: support for multiple content types, improved contextual precision, and a system that learns from user behaviour.
"Those are some great suggestions! Yes, some of the features we plan to add in the future to make SmartLinker AI even smarter would be: Giving the editor an option to choose multiple content types (currently supports only one). Empowering the editor to select the most valid link from a choice of multiple links. Further reducing AI hallucinations and improving contextual intelligence. Adding self-learning intelligence so it learns from editorial decisions and analytics."
She also explained how they hope to align SmartLinker AI with Drupal’s evolving editorial tools, like the Layout Builder. The goal is to eventually offer internal link suggestions beyond just body fields.
"Absolutely! We want to see SmartLinker AI evolve with Drupal as it moves towards a more marketer-friendly experience. For example, as Layout Builder gets smarter and more flexible, SmartLinker AI could surface internal link suggestions right inside block-based content editing. It should be able to suggest links for text blocks, callouts, or inline teasers, not just body fields. As the editorial UX evolves, SmartLinker should be able to make smarter suggestions that make more editorial sense."
As for early feedback, the response has been overwhelmingly positive, especially at DrupalCon Atlanta 2025, where they showcased the module and heard directly from developers and editors.
"The feedback so far has been great, with some of the core Drupal AI team members appreciating the simple but effective use case and the problem it solves.
We were fortunate enough to have launched SmartLinker AI just a week before DrupalCon Atlanta 2025, which gave us the opportunity to receive live feedback from both developers and content creators on how this tool can ease their jobs. We were especially thrilled when James Abrahams from Freely Give Ltd. gave us a shoutout in one of his AI sessions, highlighting how SmartLinker provided significant value in such a simple way."
Giving Back to the Community
Shefali said their goal wasn’t just to solve their own problem—it was to contribute something valuable to the broader Drupal ecosystem. That meant making it open source and welcoming community input.
"We wanted to build a tool that not only showcases what’s possible with Drupal and AI today but also inspires others to push the boundaries further. And by sharing it with the community, we’re making sure the innovation grows with everyone."
SmartLinker AI is open-source, Drupal-native, and solves a real content pain point. That’s the kind of contribution we hope lifts the whole ecosystem and helps move Drupal a step closer to becoming a more marketer-friendly CMS.
—Shefali Shetty Director of Marketing at Specbee
They’ve opened SmartLinker AI to feature requests, GitHub issues, and outside contributions.
"SmartLinker AI was born in the spirit of community, and we fully plan to keep it that way. We’ve already opened the doors for feature requests, GitHub contributions, and collabs with other Drupal devs and agencies who see the potential and want to help shape it. If you've got ideas, code, or strong opinions (we know you do), we’re all ears. SmartLinker’s intelligence may be artificial, but its heart is 100% open source :)"
SmartLinker AI isn’t just another AI add-on. It’s a focused solution to a frustrating, real-world problem, developed by people who live and breathe Drupal. Specbee didn’t just build a module—they built a better workflow for anyone managing content inside Drupal. With clear benefits for SEO, editorial efficiency, and user experience—and an open door for the community to collaborate—it’s the kind of tool that reflects what Drupal does best: solve problems with flexibility, power, and purpose.
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Disclosure: This content is produced with the assistance of AI.
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Kazima AbbasKazima Abbas is a sub-editor at The Drop Times
