November | Building and running Web Apps with AI tools

Last PHP Sussex meetup of 2026!

It’s almost exactly a year since Anthropic and OpenAI released Opus 4.5 and GPT 5.1, a turning point marking the transition from chatbots to autonomous agents. Many industry leaders started 2026 with entirely new perspectives on the technology, having had the time to experiment with those models over the Christmas break.

A year later, have those promises materialised?

James Turner, Technical Director & co-founder of Esparter Ltd, is one of those engineers who fully embraced AI for their development workflow. In “Building and running WebApps with AI tools”, he explains how he builds and maintains software using Large Language Models (LLMs).

Building and running WebApps with AI tools

When used properly AI can help drastically improve the efficiency (and quality) of building and maintaining software systems. Like any powerful tool, LLMs have practical limitations and second order effects that can result in negative consequences.

Taking one of our web-based SaaS products (orderwhizz.com) as an example we’ll look at some of those limitations and how they were mitigated. There will be some theory, code samples and recommendations for more effective use of LLMs when developing and supporting production web apps.

The meetup will take place at Runway East in Brighton from 6:30 pm, with the talk starting at around 7 pm. As always, there will be food and drinks and plenty of time to chat with fellow developers. After the talk, we’ll head to UnBarred Taproom, a 2-minute walk from our venue, to wind up the evening over a craft beer 🍻.

PHP Sussex is supported by Silicon Brighton and Runway East.

Runway East has been fighting boring offices since 2014. Members get team bliss guaranteed, space to scale and Big Desk Energy.