Abilities API

Part of the AI Building Blocks for WordPress initiative

Handbook

Overview

• undefinedPurpose: provide a common way for WordPress core, plugins, and themes to describe what they can do (“abilities”) in a machine‑readable, human‑friendly form.
• undefinedScope: discovery, permissioning, and execution metadata only. Actual business logic stays inside the registering component.
• undefinedAudience: plugin & theme authors, agency builders, and future AI / automation tools.

Design Goals

1. undefinedDiscoverability - every ability can be listed, queried, and inspected.
2. undefinedInteroperability - a uniform schema lets unrelated components compose workflows.
3. undefinedSecurity‑first - explicit permissions determine who/what may invoke an ability.
4. undefinedGradual adoption - ships first as a Composer package, migrates smoothly to core.

Documentation

• undefinedDeveloper docs.
• undefinedContributing Guidelines.

Inspiration

• undefinedwp‑feature‑api - shared vision of declaring capabilities at the PHP layer.
• Command Palette experiments in Gutenberg.
• Modern AI assistant protocols (MCP, A2A).

Current Status

Milestones	State
Placeholder repository	undefinedcreatedundefined
Spec draft	undefinedcreatedundefined
Prototype plugin & Composer package	undefinedcreatedundefined
Community feedback (#core‑ai Slack)	undefinedcreatedundefined
Core proposal	in progress
Initial	undefinedcreatedundefined
WordPress 6.9	in progress

How to Get Involved

• undefinedDiscuss: #core-ai channel on WordPress Slack.
• undefinedFile issues: suggestions & use‑cases welcome in this repo.
• undefinedPrototype: experiment with the feature plugin or the wordpress/abilities-api Composer package.

License

WordPress is free software, and is released under the terms of the GNU General Public License version 2 or (at your option) any later version. See LICENSE.md for complete license.