Automattic recently released Telex, and if you have been around as long as I have, you know that experimental usually means bring your own debugger. Still, using natural language to generate a WordPress theme changes how we scaffold a project. I have spent 14 years hand-coding PHP templates, so watching a design brief turn into a working ZIP in minutes is impressive and a little unsettling.
Telex is an AI authoring environment that builds block themes from scratch. It skips the usual wrestling with the template hierarchy and outputs modern block-based structures instead, leaning on theme.json and block patterns rather than the legacy PHP we normally end up cleaning.
1. Scaffolding the idea with prompts
The biggest mistake I see devs make with AI is being vague. To generate a WordPress theme a client can actually use, think like an architect rather than a blogger. Telling Telex to make a blue site wastes your turn, and it hands you a generic layout you will refactor anyway.
Write a prompt that spells out the visual hierarchy and the intent. If you are building a landing page for a recruitment consultant, say exactly where the conversion points belong. The more technical context you give it, things like a sticky header, a CTA above the fold or a muted palette, the better the first scaffold comes out.
2. Use the enhance prompt button
There is an Enhance Prompt button next to generate. Do not skip it. Telex turns your rough notes into a formal design brief and fills in the typography, spacing and trust signals you probably never mentioned. The output then comes back looking like a finished page instead of a wireframe.
3. Visual references and variations
If you have a mockup, or a competitor site that gets it right, upload a reference image. Telex reads the visual and works from it, then hands you four variations. In my experience one has the right bones and the others lean too experimental. Pick the one that matches the user’s flow, not the prettiest one.
4. Building out the template hierarchy
One thing to watch: Telex starts you with a single template, and a real site needs specialized layouts. You have to ask it for the rest of the hierarchy, which means:
- Archive templates for job listings or blog posts.
- Custom page templates for “Services” or “Contact.”
- Single post layouts with specific metadata blocks.
Defining those templates inside the tool keeps the CSS variables and theme.json settings consistent across the whole site, which saves you from style regressions later.
5. Inspecting the generated code
The ZIP is a real block theme, not a pile of loose files. If you want to see what is inside, a theme.json from Telex looks roughly like this:
{
"version": 2,
"settings": {
"appearanceTools": true,
"color": {
"palette": [
{
"color": "#1a1a1a",
"name": "Base",
"slug": "base"
},
{
"color": "#007cba",
"name": "Accent",
"slug": "accent"
}
]
},
"typography": {
"fontFamilies": [
{
"fontFamily": "\"Inter\", sans-serif",
"name": "Inter",
"slug": "inter"
}
]
}
}
}Note the appearanceTools flag. Turning it on is normal practice now, since the user gets full control in the Site Editor and we stop writing custom CSS for every margin and padding tweak.
6. Testing and deployment
Test the theme before you go near a live server. WordPress Playground and WordPress Studio both do the job. I have written before about how WordPress Playground changed local development, and it is a good sandbox for an AI-generated theme: you get to see how your existing content maps onto the new blocks before anything can take the site down.
If this Generate a WordPress Theme work is eating your dev hours, I can take it off your plate. I have been wrestling with WordPress since the 4.x days.
Toy or tool?
Telex is not replacing a senior developer, but it is a real shortcut for scaffolding. Instead of an empty index.php and style.css, you start from a block theme that is about 90% done. It is still experimental, so expect the odd race condition or CSS glitch. For rapid prototyping I have not found anything faster. If you want a tool like this wired into a GitHub-based pipeline, I covered that in my guide to pro block theme development workflows.
Try it, break it, and come back and tell me in the comments what happened.
