Stop Doing It Yourself: Building AI-Powered Admin Tools with the WordPress AI API

A hands-on workshop covering the WordPress 7.0 AI Building Blocks: the PHP AI Client, the Abilities API, and MCP. Designed for delivery as a half-day session at WordCamps, meetups, and similar events.

Pre-Workshop Setup Checklist

To avoid wifi bottlenecks on the day, please complete this before you arrive:

1. WordPress Studio — Download and install WordPress Studio.

2. Create a site from the blueprint — Download the blueprint.json file from this repository. In Studio, click Add site → Start from a blueprint → Choose blueprint file and select the downloaded file.

3. Node.js v20+ — Recommended via NVM:

   nvm install 20 && nvm use 20

4. Install JS dependencies in the workshop plugin directory:

   cd /path/to/your/studio/site/wp-content/plugins/wp-ai-workshop-trunk
   npm install

   Studio installs the plugin from trunk.zip, so the directory ends up named wp-ai-workshop-trunk (with the -trunk suffix). Use that path here.

5. Configure an API key in your Studio site's WordPress admin under Settings → Connectors. Any of the following will work:

   • Anthropic (Text generation with Claude)
   • OpenAI (Text and image generation with GPT and DALL·E)
   • Google (Text and image generation with Gemini and Imagen)

Not using Studio? For any other local WordPress installation you will need:

• WordPress Beta Tester — install and activate it, then go to Tools → Beta Testing and switch to the WordPress 7.0 RC channel to update your site to 7.0 RC4.

• AI plugin — install and activate from the WordPress plugin directory.

• This workshop plugin — clone the repo into your wp-content/plugins/ directory and activate it:

  cd /path/to/your/site/wp-content/plugins/
  git clone https://github.com/wptrainingteam/wp-ai-workshop
  cd wp-ai-workshop
  npm install
  wp plugin activate wp-ai-workshop

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Welcome!

Thanks for joining us today! We have 3.5 hours together — about 90 minutes of guided instruction, then a 2-hour hackathon. We'll move at a steady pace, but there's room for questions along the way.

What Are We Building?

WordPress 7.0 RC4 brings together three AI building blocks for the first time:

• PHP AI Client — new in 7.0 core: a provider-agnostic PHP SDK for talking to AI models (wp_ai_client_prompt())
• Abilities API — server-side PHP shipped in 6.9; the JavaScript client API (@wordpress/abilities) is new in 7.0
• MCP support — provided by the mcp-adapter package (bundled with the AI plugin), which exposes abilities opted in via meta.mcp.public to MCP-compatible agents like Claude Desktop and Cursor

We're going to build a simplified Content Summarization plugin from scratch. It's the same feature that ships in the official WordPress/ai reference plugin — stripped down so every line is understandable.

By the end of the guided section you will have:

• A WordPress plugin that connects to an AI provider
• A registered Ability callable via the REST API
• A block editor button that generates a summary and inserts it as a quote block at the top of the post

Then you'll have 2 hours to build whatever you want using the same patterns.

Structure

There are 4 required guided sections (1 tour + 3 coding) plus 3 optional sections — a follow-on coding section that rebuilds the editor integration with @wordpress/abilities, an MCP demo, and a 2-hour hackathon. Each section builds on the previous one.

The plugin in the repo root is intentionally a scaffold — empty includes/ and src/ directories with just a plugin header. You'll fill it in as the workshop progresses. If you fall behind or want a clean start, the code-reference/ folders contain the complete state of the code at the end of each coding section.

Note on code-reference/section-2/: this snapshot contains a temporary smoke-test function that Section 3 begins by deleting. If you copy section-2 forward as a starting point, remove wp_ai_workshop_test_ai_connection (and its add_action call) before continuing.

Section ↔ code-reference mapping:

Section	Code reference	State
1 — Tour AI Experiments Plugin	no code	Exploration only
2 — Scaffold + AI API	code-reference/section-2/	Plugin stub + smoke-test AI request
3 — Register the Ability	code-reference/section-3/	Ability registered, callable via REST
4 — Block Editor Integration (apiFetch)	code-reference/section-4/	Complete plugin via the auto-generated endpoint
5 — Optional @wordpress/abilities rebuild	code-reference/section-5/	Same feature, script-module + abilities client
6 — Optional MCP Demo	no code	Presenter-led demo
7 — Optional Hackathon	self-directed	Build your own ability

Adapting This Workshop for Your Event

The repository ships generic — no event-specific branding, no calendar dates, no city references — so it can be delivered as-is. If you want to brand a delivery for a specific WordCamp / meetup / company event, here is the short list of places to tweak. Everything below is optional.

1. Site banner (blueprint.json) — set the blogname option (currently WordPress AI Workshop) to whatever you want attendees to see at the top of their Studio site. This is the most visible piece of per-event branding.

2. Demo post content (blueprint.json) — the pre-seeded Hello, WordPress! post is a generic essay about WordPress. Swap it for something local — a few paragraphs about your city, your meetup, or a topic your audience cares about — if you want the summarization output to feel grounded in the moment. Keep the title as-is or rename it; just remember to update the post-title references in workshop-outline/section-1.md and workshop-outline/section-4.md if you rename.

3. Category label (includes/summarizer.php in Section 3) — WordPress AI Workshop is the label that shows up in Settings → AI → Abilities Explorer. Renaming it to your event name is a nice touch but purely cosmetic.

4. Headings in this README, facilitator-notes.md, and slides-outline.md — the title line at the top of each file is intentionally generic. If you want event branding on the title slide / facilitator handout / participant README, add a subheading (e.g. ### Delivered at WordCamp Toronto 2027) under the existing top-level heading.

5. Per-event git workflow (suggested) — keep trunk as the canonical generic version. For each delivery, create a tag (e.g. event/wcyyz-2027) or branch off trunk and apply the four tweaks above. That keeps the canonical repo unbranded and gives you a frozen snapshot of exactly what you delivered.

Nothing in the workshop logic depends on any of this — function names, ability namespaces, REST paths, and JS handles all use the neutral wp-ai-workshop / wp_ai_workshop_ prefix.

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Let's go! → Section 1: Tour the AI Experiments Plugin