Notes from the latest WordPress AI contributor meeting: the MCP client is becoming a normal plugin instead of a Composer package, the Abilities API is getting real exception handling, and AI agents are getting a proper block dictionary.
The experimental core dev toolkit is a desktop app built on Playground and WASM. It bundles Git, Node and npm, so a contributor can clone wordpress-develop and generate a Trac patch without installing anything first.
WordPress.com shipped an alpha Telegram bot for managing a site from your phone, opened Studio Sync to Personal and Premium plans, and split MCP read and write tool access per site.
WooCommerce 10.7 is mostly a performance release: the /wc/v4/orders endpoint drops from 271 queries to 132 and checkout loses about 15% of its SQL. It also ships a Fulfillment API beta and moves the Fulfillments namespace, which breaks old use statements.
Trunk is closed to 7.1 commits and WordPress 7.0 is under a hard string freeze while the core team stabilizes real-time collaboration. What that means for your workflow, plus the new custom sync provider API and where to help before the RC.
The WordPress ecosystem has drifted from crediting contributors to crediting their employers, from WordCamp badges to Five for the Future testimonials. My argument for putting people back first, and why pledged hours are the wrong thing to count.
Jetpack now lets you comp a paid subscription from the Subscribers screen, so gifting access no longer means a custom VIP role and a pile of expiring metadata. Here is what changes, plus the math on Substack’s 10% cut.
The 7.0 release went back from RC to Beta so Real-Time Collaboration data could move out of post_meta and into its own table. Also covers the WP AI Client, pseudo-states in theme.json and the Playground MCP server.
Notes from the April 8, 2026 dev chat: WordPress 7.0 makes the collaboration sync layer provider agnostic, so polling is only the default. What that means for WebSocket providers, CRDT reconciliation and block API v3.
WordPress 7.0 ships three pieces of AI plumbing: the Abilities API for registering what a site can do, the AI Client for provider-agnostic model calls, and the MCP Adapter that exposes both to assistants like Claude.