This week’s AI contributor meeting focused on final preparation for the Abilities API A core WordPress API (introduced in 6.9) that creates a central registry of capabilities, making WordPress functions discoverable and accessible to AI agents, automation tools, and developers. Transforms WordPress from isolated functions into a unified system. merge proposal, WordCamp WordCamps are casual, locally-organized conferences covering everything related to WordPress. They're one of the places where the WordPress community comes together to teach one another what they’ve learned throughout the year and share the joy. Learn more. US planning, PHP 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/index.php AI Client compatibility work, and contributor priorities ahead of WordPress 7.1 Beta 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. 1.
WordCamp US AI Team booth
The team reviewed planning for the WordCamp US 2026 AI Team booth.
Contributors who expect to attend WordCamp US and may be available to help at the booth are encouraged to sign up for a shift. Signing up is not a firm commitment, but helps the team understand likely volunteer availability.
@gajendrasingh also volunteered to help remotely with booth preparation and coordination. This includes serving as a liaison with WordCamp US organizers and helping ensure the team provides any needed information, posts, or preparation materials.
DECISION: @gajendrasingh will help coordinate remotely with WordCamp US organizers for AI Team booth preparation.
Abilities API
The Abilities API merge proposal draft is nearing publication on Make/Core Core is the set of software required to run WordPress. The Core Development Team builds WordPress.. The team discussed how best to share the proposal for pre-publish review after the private preview link was not accessible to all reviewers.
To avoid blocking review, the pre-publish draft will be shared through a Google Doc. After publication, broader proposal feedback should happen in public comments on Make/Core.
The team also noted that @gziolo opened additional, smaller Trac Trac is the place where contributors create issues for bugs or feature requests much like GitHub.https://core.trac.wordpress.org/. tickets related to ability A registered, self-documenting unit of WordPress functionality that can be discovered and invoked through multiple contexts (REST API, Command Palette, MCP). Includes authorization and input/output specifications. flags and categories. Contributors are encouraged to join those discussions, especially around centralizing how ability categories are discussed and represented.
DECISION: Pre-publish review of the Abilities API merge proposal will happen in Google Docs, with broader feedback moving to Make/Core after publication.
DECISION: Feedback on ability renaming should continue in the AI Plugin 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. PRs, with agreed changes backported to WordPress core once settled.
AI Plugin
AI Plugin 1.1.0 was released this week and is in the WordPress.org The community site where WordPress code is created and shared by the users. This is where you can download the source code for WordPress core, plugins and themes as well as the central location for community conversations and organization. https://wordpress.org/ plugin directory release process. The plugin also passed 100,000 all-time downloads and is currently at more than 30,000 active installs.
A release announcement post is in progress. Help is welcome with a short demo video or screenshots showing the newest Experiments and updated Settings page.
With WordPress 7.1 Beta 1 approaching, the team noted that near-term contributor focus may shift away from general AI Plugin work and toward the PHP AI Client and Abilities API work needed for the release timeline.
PHP AI Client
The first-pass review of the embeddings PR is complete. A few changes are still needed, but the overall direction looks good. @dkotter and @jeffpaul focused on helping get this merged in and released before shifting to respective updates in AI Client ahead of WP 7.1 Beta 1 deadline on July 15th.
The streaming PR is also open and awaiting feedback.
A significant part of the meeting focused on PHPDoc type handling, static analysis, and PHP version compatibility. The team discussed a PHPStan-related issue where namespaces can be lost when working with stub files, causing downstream type errors in IDEs and static analysis tools.
To address this, contributors discussed using fully qualified class names in PHPDoc types. While this adds some verbosity, the change is autofixable through linting and should improve downstream reliability for projects using the PHP AI Client.
DECISION: Proceed with a PR to enforce fully qualified class names in PHPDoc types, then request review from @flixos90.
The team also discussed a compatibility issue where the PHP AI Client currently depends on behavior available in PHP 7.4.12, while WordPress core still supports PHP 7.4.0. Since bumping the minimum PHP version would diverge from WordPress core support, the preferred fix is to move strict return types into doc blocks where needed.
DECISION: Preserve WordPress core PHP compatibility by moving affected return types into doc blocks instead of bumping the PHP minimum version.
Knowledge
The team noted the current merge proposal around Knowledge, previously referred to as Guidelines.
Contributors were encouraged to provide final feedback soon so the remaining work can move forward. If feedback comes in later, changes can still be adjusted during the WP 7.1 beta period as needed.
Contributor updates
@fellyph shared that work is underway to translate the AI Plugin into Brazilian Portuguese. AI Team announcements are also being shared with the Brazilian WordPress community, where AI-related posts have been getting strong interest.
@intenzi joined the discussion as a newer contributor focused on bug fixes and testing AI-related PRs.
Contributors looking for impactful work over the next two weeks are encouraged to focus on the PHP AI Client and Abilities API work tied to the WordPress 7.1 Beta 1 deadline on July 15th.
Next Steps
- Review and provide final pre-publish feedback on the Abilities API merge proposal.
- Join the discussion on the newly opened Abilities API Trac tickets.
- Continue feedback on ability naming in the AI Plugin PRs.
- Finish changes needed for the embeddings pull request.
- Review and test the streaming PR.
- Create and review the fully qualified class names pull request for PHPDoc types.
- Update affected PHP AI Client return types to preserve PHP 7.4.0 compatibility.
- Help with screenshots or a short demo video for the AI Plugin 1.1.0 release announcement.
- Sign up to help with the WordCamp US AI Team booth if you may be attending.
- Provide final feedback on the Knowledge merge proposal.
Upcoming Meetings
- Contributors are welcome to join every Wednesday at 1700 UTC via Google Meet. In-meeting notes are captured live in a Slack Slack is a Collaborative Group Chat Platform https://slack.com/. The WordPress community has its own Slack Channel at https://make.wordpress.org/chat/ Canvas and paired with aggregate transcription data to generate this meeting summary post. All team meeting schedules are published directly to the WordPress Meeting Calendar.
- AI Team Office Hours (Slack): Thursday, 9 July 2026
- Weekly AI Contributor Call (Google Meet): Wednesday, 8 July 2026.
Props to @justlevine for pre-publish review.
#core-ai, #summary
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