Core Philosophy
Make everything discoverable: Functions aren’t just accessible, they’re self-documenting and findable programmatically.
Never lock in
- Don’t tie users to specific AI providers
- Don’t hard-code standards; use adapters
- Build platform-agnostic first, adapt to WordPress second
Modular building blocks: Components work independently but are more powerful together. The more plugins adopt them, the stronger the ecosystem.
“Canonical first, CoreCore Core is the set of software required to run WordPress. The Core Development Team builds WordPress. when ready”: Ship as plugins first to avoid lock-in, enable production use, and let features mature before considering Core inclusion.
Development Approach
Composer packages: Distribute as packages so developers can use them in production before Core consideration.
Progressive enhancement: Foundation pieces first (Abilities APIAbilities API A core WordPress API (introduced in 6.9) that creates a central registry of capabilities, making WordPress functions discoverable and accessible to AI agents, automation tools, and developers. Transforms WordPress from isolated functions into a unified system. in 6.9), then layer capabilities through plugins and experiments.
Optional experimentation: AI features are opt-in, creating safe spaces for exploration without affecting production.
Community collaboration: Develop openly via GitHubGitHub GitHub is a website that offers online implementation of git repositories that can easily be shared, copied and modified by other developers. Public repositories are free to host, private repositories require a paid subscription. GitHub introduced the concept of the ‘pull request’ where code changes done in branches by contributors can be reviewed and discussed before being merged by the repository owner. https://github.com/ and SlackSlack Slack is a Collaborative Group Chat Platform https://slack.com/. The WordPress community has its own Slack Channel at https://make.wordpress.org/chat/, working with both PHPPHP PHP (recursive acronym for PHP: Hypertext Preprocessor) is a widely-used open source general-purpose scripting language that is especially suited for web development and can be embedded into HTML. https://www.php.net/manual/en/preface.php and WordPress communities.
Vision
Focus on end implementations: Design for specific use cases (Site Admin, Post Editor, Media Library) rather than technology for its own sake.
Open questions: Acknowledge uncertainty and invite community discussion about the path to Core.
