I stopped hand-reviewing every line my coding agents write. What I do instead: fine-grained permissions in settings.json, a strict deny list for destructive commands, and a second agent that reviews the first one’s work.
I spent months trying to make Claude Code my main tool, but since GPT-5.5 I’ve moved complex WordPress refactoring back to OpenAI Codex. Here’s my setup: reasoning levels, Playwright MCP, and a worktree alias.
WordPress 7.0 brings a central Connectors hub and a Connector Approval flow for AI credentials. Here’s what the May 2026 plan means in practice: custom tables for request logging, the AI Plugin 1.0.0 release, and what the approval flow does and doesn’t protect.
WordPress 7.0 RC5 is the fifth release candidate before the May 20th launch, and it exists to catch the bugs found after RC4. Here is how to install it on a staging site with WP-CLI, the Beta Tester plugin or Playground, and what to check in your own hooks.
WordPress 7.0 “Armstrong” puts an AI Client and a provider-agnostic Abilities API into core, registers blocks from PHP alone, and raises the minimum PHP version to 7.4. Here is what changes if you maintain client sites.
Trunk is open and bumped to 7.1-alpha, so WordPress 7.1 development has started. Why the core team held trunk shut through the 7.0 cycle, how the double signoff rule works on numbered branches, and how to test an alpha build without wrecking your dev site.
Chunk-and-embed RAG loses the hierarchy that gives a 200-page contract its meaning. How the Proxy-Pointer framework indexes structural breadcrumbs instead of raw text, and how the two-stage retrieval works in Python.
WooCommerce 10.9 brings variation galleries into core, retiring the paid Additional Variation Images extension. Notes on the new meta key, the Action Scheduler migration, and the theme overrides that tend to break it.
The WooCommerce 10.8 release slips one week to May 26, 2026, clearing the WordPress 7.0 launch on May 20 and buying time to validate a late-landing change. Revised RC and release dates, plus what to check first.
Notes from the core performance chat the day before WordPress 7.0 ships: on-demand block style loading for classic themes, Performance Lab moving to PHP 7.4, npm ignore-scripts, and an FTP filesystem install fix.