About Crawl, Walk, Press
A free, open-source 30-day training program that teaches anyone — creators, marketers, developers, and site owners — to build with the WordPress AI stack.
Why This Exists
WordPress is becoming AI-native. In 2025-2026, the platform shipped the Abilities API, a Model Context Protocol server, an AI Client SDK, and a growing ecosystem of AI-powered plugins. These are powerful tools — but most teams don’t know they exist, let alone how to use them together.
Crawl, Walk, Press bridges that gap. It’s a structured, hands-on program designed for the people who actually create content — editors, writers, marketers, product managers, and site owners — not just developers.
The Philosophy
The name says it all:
- Crawl (Week 1) — Install the tools, understand what each one does, get comfortable
- Walk (Weeks 2-3) — Connect them to your real content, build actual workflows, see real results
- Press (Week 4) — Ship it to your team, write the policy, measure the impact, present the demo
Every exercise takes 10-20 minutes. No coding required through Day 25. You can do it during your morning coffee.
The Stack
You’ll learn seven tools that make WordPress AI-native:
| Tool | What It Does | When You Learn It |
|---|---|---|
| Abilities API | WordPress core framework for AI-discoverable capabilities | Day 6 |
| WordPress MCP | Connects AI agents like Claude to your WordPress site | Day 4, then throughout |
| Studio CLI & Studio Code | Local dev + AI-powered theme/site building | Day 2, Weeks 3-4 |
| Telex | Describe an idea in English → get a WordPress block or theme | Days 3, 12, 19 |
| WordPress Playground | Full WordPress in your browser, zero install | Day 1 |
| WordPress AI plugin | Title gen, excerpts, alt text, content optimization | Day 5 |
| WordPress 7.0 AI Client | Provider-agnostic AI SDK in WordPress core | Days 26, 28-30 |
Who It’s For
This program is designed for:
- Content teams who want to integrate AI into their daily workflows
- Product managers evaluating WordPress AI capabilities for their sites
- Content strategists looking to scale output without sacrificing quality
- Anyone curious about how WordPress and AI work together in 2026
You don’t need to be a developer. You don’t need a specific hosting provider. You just need a computer, curiosity, and 15 minutes a day.
How to Access the Course
🌐 In Your Browser
Launch in WordPress Playground — try the full course instantly, no install needed.
💻 Run Locally
Clone the GitHub repo and run with Studio CLI for a persistent local site with full WP-CLI access.
📄 Read Offline
Download the full markdown or import the Todoist template for task tracking.
Open Source
Crawl, Walk, Press is free and open-source under the GPL v2 license — the same license as WordPress itself. The entire course, theme, and progress tracker are available on GitHub. Found a typo? Have a better exercise idea? PRs welcome.
Created By
Alan Smodic — I work with media publishers building on WordPress, and kept seeing the same gap: powerful AI tools shipping in WordPress, but editorial teams not knowing how to use them. This program is my attempt to fix that, one 15-minute exercise at a time.