📅 Day 5 of 30 · Week 1: Get the Stack · ⏱ 15 minutes
🔓 No key or cannot install? Do this instead. No API key? Two keyless options: Studio Code uses WordPress.com infrastructure with no key at all, or do the same title, excerpt, and alt-text task in Claude.ai by pasting your draft in. Telex and Playground never need a key.
What Is the WordPress AI Plugin?
The WordPress AI plugin is a official experimental plugin from WordPress.org (v1.0.2, the reference implementation for the AI Building Blocks) that brings AI-powered editing tools into the block editor and a dashboard UI on top of the core Abilities API. It’s free, open-source, requires WordPress 7.0+, and works with multiple providers — OpenAI, Google, and Anthropic. When the 7.0 release announcement mentioned “AI abilities, all managed from a central hub,” that hub is the Abilities Explorer screen this plugin adds.
🔧 Tool: WordPress AI plugin — Official experimental plugin (wordpress.org/plugins/ai). Requires a separate AI connector + API key. Adds the Abilities Explorer admin screen plus title/excerpt/alt text generation, image generation and editing, editorial notes, content summarization, content classification, and comment moderation. Requires WP 7.0+. View on WordPress.org →
Installing the Plugin
The AI plugin is in the official WordPress.org plugin directory, so install is the normal one-click flow:
- In your WordPress admin, go to Plugins → Add New and search for AI (author: WordPress.org)
- Click Install Now, then Activate
- Go to Settings → Connectors and configure at least one AI provider (OpenAI, Google, or Anthropic) with your own API key
- Go to Settings → AI to globally enable functionality, then turn on the individual features and experiments you want to use
For Playground users: install it directly in your Playground sandbox to experiment risk-free before adding it to a production site.
The Core Features
1. Abilities Explorer
The dashboard UI on top of the core Abilities API (which you’ll learn about on Day 6). Lists every registered ability with its description, provider, input schema, and output schema. You can run abilities directly from the admin to test them — invaluable when you’re developing custom abilities or auditing what AI agents can do on your site.
2. Title Generation
Click into a post’s title field and use the Generate button. The plugin opens a modal with 3–5 alternative headlines optimized for clarity and engagement, which you can regenerate, edit, and apply.
Why it matters for editorial teams: Headlines are the single biggest lever for article performance. AI-generated alternatives help break you out of your default patterns and test new approaches.
3. Excerpt, Meta Description & Content Summarization
Auto-generates article summaries that work as excerpts, meta descriptions (with hooks for popular SEO plugins), and inline Content Summary blocks. Useful for social share text, newsletter blurbs, and SEO snippets.
4. Alt Text & Image Generation
Generates descriptive alt text for any image in the block editor or Media Library — a critical accessibility and SEO requirement that editorial teams often skip under deadline pressure. The same area also handles AI image generation and editing (expand, replace background, edit subjects) from the post editor and Media Library.
5. Editorial Notes & Updates
Reviews post content block-by-block and adds Notes with suggestions for Accessibility, Readability, Grammar, and SEO. The companion Editorial Updates feature can apply those notes for you. Designed around a “human approves first” philosophy — suggestions surface in the editor and you decide what lands.
6. Content Classification & Comment Moderation
Suggests relevant tags and categories for posts based on content. Comment Moderation labels incoming comments with toxicity and sentiment scores you can sort and filter by in the Comments screen — handy for high-volume publications.
Today’s Exercise
- Install the plugin — Plugins → Add New → search “AI” → Install → Activate (or use Playground for a safe sandbox)
- Configure an AI provider — Settings → Connectors → add OpenAI, Google, or Anthropic with your API key. Then Settings → AI → enable the global toggle and a few features
- Open the Abilities Explorer (in the AI menu) and run one ability from the admin — get a feel for how abilities behave before Day 6
- Open an existing draft and try Title Generation — generate alternatives and compare them to your original
- Upload an image and test alt text generation — how does it compare to hand-written alt text?
💡 Tip: The AI plugin + MCP is a powerful combination. In Week 2, you’ll learn to use Claude with MCP to query your content programmatically — asking questions like “which posts are missing alt text?” and getting bulk AI-assisted fixes.
✅ Key Takeaway: The WordPress AI plugin is the official editor-side surface for the new AI stack — Abilities Explorer for visibility, plus title, excerpt, image, alt text, editorial notes, and moderation features. “Human approves first” by design, works with your choice of provider, no paid platform required — just your own API key.