LLM-based development tools promise unprecedented speed. But without proper foundations, velocity turns into recklessness: technical debt accumulates faster, architectural boundaries erode more quickly, and defects ship sooner. The opposite failure mode is just as real: teams that insist on control without speed cannot keep up with what their clients and markets demand.
This talk shows how to establish automated safety nets that let teams move faster precisely because they can trust their quality controls. Using PHP and established tools such as PHPUnit and PHPStan as the running example, it traces how automated testing, static analysis, and the enforcement of architectural boundaries evolve in agent-assisted workflows. This includes the boundary between a project's own domain code and the framework and platform it builds on. It culminates in a test-driven pattern in which humans write specifications as tests and coding agents generate the implementations. Along the way, it develops criteria for evaluating an existing quality infrastructure and an order in which to adopt the practices.
The central insight: the practices that make working with coding agents safe are the same practices that make human development fast. That convergence is the path to sustainable speed.
The first time I present "Speed is a byproduct of trust" will be at the Forum PHP on in Disneyland Paris.
I am the creator and maintainer of PHPUnit, the de facto standard testing framework within the PHP ecosystem. Used by millions of developers, it is embedded in the build pipelines of start-ups, Fortune 500 companies, and public sector organisations alike. I serve on the board of the PHP Foundation and am a co-founder of thePHP.cc, where I advise organisations on testing strategy, software quality, and the responsible adoption of AI-assisted development workflows.
I have over 25 years of experience working with Open Source software, having contributed to the PHP language itself as well as the tools on which that ecosystem depends. Much of that work has been devoted to one goal: building the automated safety nets, from testing to static analysis, that allow teams to change software with confidence. AI-assisted development raises the stakes, but it does not change the fundamentals. The quality practices I have spent my career building and teaching are precisely what make it safe to go fast, and that conviction is at the heart of this presentation.
On and , I will be in Disneyland Paris at the Forum PHP. There I will give the presentations "Past, Present, Future: The PHPUnit Story" and "Speed is a byproduct of trust".
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