neillmcshea 2:49 pm on 16 October 2025
Tags: , ,   

Core-AI Contributor Check-in – Oct 16th, 2025

This week’s meeting was characterized by an urgent focus on hitting the Friday milestone for the Abilities APIAPI An API or Application Programming Interface is a software intermediary that allows programs to interact with each other and share data in limited, clearly defined ways. to ensure inclusion in the upcoming WordPress 6.9 betaBeta A pre-release of software that is given out to a large group of users to trial under real conditions. Beta versions have gone through alpha testing in-house and are generally fairly close in look, feel and function to the final product; however, design changes often occur as part of the process. release (scheduled for the following week). The team quickly made a decision to formally extend the internal milestone deadline to Friday to allow time for critical reviews and merges.

The discussion revolved around which in-progress features (like categories, coreCore Core is the set of software required to run WordPress. The Core Development Team builds WordPress. abilities, and filtering) could realistically be finalized without introducing complexity or technical debt. The team prioritized confirming that the core functionality—registering and retrieving abilities—was done, while tabling or deferring more complex “icing on the cake” features like filtering. Jason Adams was tasked with raising an immediate decision point to leadership on whether to pull an in-progress feature if it could not be finalized quickly.

Finally, the team received exciting external validation as Jeff Marx shared that he had successfully implemented 11 abilities using the Abilities API in the GatherPress pluginPlugin A plugin is a piece of software containing a group of functions that can be added to a WordPress website. They can extend functionality or add new features to your WordPress websites. WordPress plugins are written in the PHP programming language and integrate seamlessly with WordPress. These can be free in the WordPress.org Plugin Directory https://wordpress.org/plugins/ or can be cost-based plugin from a third-party, demonstrating the API’s readiness for real-world plugin development.

Key Highlights

🗓️ Abilities API Deadline and Scope

The team established a firm internal deadline to complete all necessary work for the Abilities API to make it into the core WordPress 6.9 beta.

  • Milestone Reset: The internal milestone deadline was formally moved from Thursday to Friday to allow critical work to be completed without unnecessary panic.
  • Core Deadline: The target for core integration is tied to the WordPress 6.9 Beta 1 release, which is scheduled for the beginning of the following week (the 21st).
  • Core Functionality Complete: The essential goal for 6.9—the ability to register and retrieve abilities—is already complete.
  • Focus on Core, Defer “Icing”: The team prioritized shipping the core API and deferring optional features like filtering to avoid introducing complexity or missing the deadline. Filtering was deemed non-essential, as developers can always retrieve all abilities and filterFilter Filters are one of the two types of Hooks https://codex.wordpress.org/Plugin_API/Hooks. They provide a way for functions to modify data of other functions. They are the counterpart to Actions. Unlike Actions, filters are meant to work in an isolated manner, and should never have side effects such as affecting global variables and output. them manually.
  • Urgent Decision Point (Cherry on the Cake):
    • An in-progress feature (the “half cherry,” likely a complex required field like categories) was noted as partially merged on the PHPPHP PHP (recursive acronym for PHP: Hypertext Preprocessor) is a widely-used open source general-purpose scripting language that is especially suited for web development and can be embedded into HTML. https://www.php.net/manual/en/preface.php. side but lacking JavaScriptJavaScript JavaScript or JS is an object-oriented computer programming language commonly used to create interactive effects within web browsers. WordPress makes extensive use of JS for a better user experience. While PHP is executed on the server, JS executes within a user’s browser. https://www.javascript.com/./client-side completion.
    • Action: Jason Adams was tasked with getting an immediate decision from core leadership (James and Greg) by end of play the following day (Friday) on whether to pull the unfinished feature entirely or push for its completion by the new deadline.

Abilities API Core Features Status

The team reviewed the status of key features intended for the 6.9 core merge:

  • Categories (Grouping Mechanism):
    • Status: Work is in progress and is now required due to a prior decision.
    • Plan: Ovidiu Galatan committed to completing the implementation and aligning the MCP Adapter with the required categories today, provided the filtering work is paused.
  • Core Abilities:
    • Status: A draft PR exists but is unlikely to be fully reviewed, approved, and merged in time.
    • Decision: The team decided to defer most initial built-in core abilities (excluding the ability fetching ability) for now to avoid slowing down the overall 6.9 timeline.
  • Filtering:
    • Status: Work is in progress but is highly complex.
    • Decision: The team agreed to pause/punt the formal filtering feature as it is not a blocker for using the Abilities API.

Client and Experiments Update

The focus shifts to completing client tools now that the Abilities API is nearing its core deadline.

  • PHP AI Client (0.2): Jason Adams is finalizing PRs to prepare for the 0.2 release of the PHP client.
    • New Feature: A preferred model feature is being added, allowing developers to provide a prioritized list of models, with the client automatically falling back to the next available model that fits the prompt criteria.
  • WordPress AI Client (0.1): Development will ramp up on the WordPress AI client wrapper (0.1 release) in the coming weeks, especially once Jason Adams shifts to full-time work on the project.
  • Experiments Plugin: Work is continuing on design mockups and product definition for future features (V2/V3). The plugin’s release is not coupled to the WordPress 6.9 release, allowing the team to iterate on it until December 2nd and beyond.

External Validation and Testing

The project received positive external validation for the Abilities API.

  • GatherPress Integration: Jeff Marx reported successfully implementing 11 abilities in the GatherPress plugin over the weekend, demonstrating the API’s effectiveness for managing events and venues.
  • Actionable Feedback: David Levine offered to review Jeff’s code and potentially create a demo video, ensuring the new code serves as valuable prior art for future API refinement before the 6.9 core deadline.

MCP Adapter Status

Focus is shifting back to the adapter now that Abilities API is nearing completion.

  • Major Refactor PR: The largest outstanding piece of work, Ovi’s Major Refactor PR, needs final review.
  • Next Steps: Ovi will align the adapter’s code with the newly required categories from the Abilities API. Once this is done and reviews are complete, the team plans to merge the PR and bump the version to the next major iteration (e.g., 0.3) to move past this stalled point.
  • Issue Cleanup: The team closed an old, ambiguous issue related to version numbering (issue 40) to reduce confusion.

#core-ai, #meeting, #summary