Adobe is constantly reshaping how AEM Sites projects are built and delivered. The SPA Editor is deprecated. The Universal Editor is the replacement. Edge Delivery Services is becoming the default delivery tier for new implementations. And a new generation of AI agents is changing how developers interact with the platform.

This article covers what changed, what replaced it, and what it means for teams planning their next AEM project.

The SPA Editor Is Deprecated

Adobe deprecated the SPA Editor with the 2025.01 release of AEM as a Cloud Service. No further enhancements or SDK updates will be made.

The SPA Editor was introduced to bring single-page application frameworks (React, Angular) into AEM's authoring experience. It worked, but it came with trade-offs:

• AEM-specific SDKs were required, coupling your frontend to Adobe's rendering pipeline.
• Framework lock-in. You chose React or Angular at project start and stayed there.
• Complex hydration. Server-side rendering plus client-side hydration added build complexity and debugging difficulty.

The SPA Editor remains supported for existing projects. But for anything new, Adobe points to the Universal Editor.

The Universal Editor

The Universal Editor is a framework-agnostic, in-context WYSIWYG editor. It works with any web technology, any rendering approach, and both AEM as a Cloud Service and AEM 6.5 LTS.

Key differences from the SPA Editor:

No AEM SDK required. The Universal Editor connects to your page through a lightweight JavaScript include and an instrumentation layer. Your frontend can use React, Vue, Svelte, plain HTML, or anything else. There is no Adobe-specific framework dependency.

Works with Edge Delivery Services and traditional AEM Sites. The same editor supports both delivery models. Teams can start with traditional AEM Sites and migrate to Edge Delivery Services later, or run both in parallel, without changing their authoring tool.

Available on AEM 6.5 LTS. The Universal Editor was released for AEM 6.5 with the 2024.11.05 maintenance release. This means on-premise and AMS customers can adopt it without migrating to Cloud Service first.

No direct migration path from SPA Editor. The architectural differences are fundamental. Moving from SPA Editor to Universal Editor means redesigning the frontend, not upgrading a dependency. Plan for this as a project, not a patch.

Edge Delivery Services

Edge Delivery Services (EDS) is Adobe's modern content delivery framework. It replaces the traditional AEM publish tier with a CDN-first, Git-based architecture optimized for performance.

How It Works

Content is authored in the Universal Editor (or in documents via Google Docs/Microsoft Word for simpler setups). Pages are built from composable blocks, small, self-contained components that combine HTML, CSS, and JavaScript. The content is pre-rendered and served from the CDN edge.

There is no application server in the delivery path. No dispatcher. No publish instance. The CDN is the publish tier.

Architecture Principles

Git-native. Code lives in GitHub. Deployments happen on push. No Cloud Manager pipeline for frontend code.

Block-based. The page is composed of blocks. Each block is a directory with a JavaScript file, a CSS file, and optionally a decoration script. No framework, no build tool required. Blocks load progressively using the ELD pattern (Eager, Lazy, Delayed) to ensure critical content renders first.

Perfect Lighthouse scores. EDS is engineered to score 100 across Performance, Accessibility, Best Practices, and SEO in Google Lighthouse. This is not aspirational. It is the baseline.

Edge Functions. For dynamic use cases (personalization, A/B testing, authentication), Edge Functions execute JavaScript at the CDN layer. Available as a separate SKU.

What Changes for Developers

The shift from traditional AEM Sites to EDS is significant:

AI Agents for AEM

Adobe now ships three top-level AI agents for AEM: the Brand Experience Agent, the Content Advisor Agent, and the Governance Agent. These are not chat assistants. They are autonomous agents that perform tasks within the AEM platform.

The most relevant to EDS is the Brand Experience Agent, which contains three sub-agents:

Experience Modernization Agent

A sub-agent of the Brand Experience Agent and the most relevant to EDS adoption. Available through the Experience Modernization Console at aemcoder.adobe.io, it is a hosted, web-based AI development environment for Edge Delivery Services.

Connect your GitHub project and prompt changes in natural language. The agent understands your site structure by reading three inputs: the project documentation, the Git repository, and the AEM content model. It can:

• Create new EDS sites from scratch
• Migrate existing sites to Edge Delivery Services
• Develop and modify blocks
• Apply style updates and template refinements
• Create landing pages

No local development environment required. This lowers the barrier to EDS adoption significantly.

Other Sub-Agents Under Brand Experience

• Experience Production Agent. Content Update, Forms Creation, and Communication Creation jobs. Automates bulk content modifications, form generation, and personalized correspondence.
• Experience Development Agent. Pipeline troubleshooting with root cause analysis, code scanning support, and template configuration. Accessed through the AI Assistant in Cloud Manager.

The other two top-level agents, Content Advisor (asset discovery and channel optimization) and Governance (brand compliance, DRM, and policy enforcement), are covered in a separate article on the full AEM agent taxonomy.

Access is through the Agentic SKU, a "Try Before You Buy" program, or the AEM Playground. Available on AEM as a Cloud Service and Edge Delivery Services only.

What This Means for Teams

If you are starting a new AEM project

Use the Universal Editor for authoring. Evaluate Edge Delivery Services for delivery. The combination gives you modern authoring with best-in-class performance. The AI agents can accelerate block development and site creation.

If you have an existing SPA Editor project

There is no rush to migrate. The SPA Editor remains supported. But plan for the transition. The Universal Editor requires a frontend redesign, and starting that assessment now avoids a forced migration later.

If you are on AEM 6.5

The Universal Editor is available to you now. You can adopt modern authoring patterns without migrating to Cloud Service. When you do migrate, the authoring layer carries over.

If you are an Adobe partner

Edge Delivery Services skills are becoming essential. The Experience Modernization Console is the fastest way to start learning. Connect a demo GitHub project and experiment. The developer documentation at aem.live is comprehensive.