WordPress 6.9 is coming and with it a few Core AI goodies including the Abilities API.
New Abilities API: A unified registry of callable WordPress capabilities with defined inputs and outputs, built for AI integrations and developer automation.
This has a lot of potential for use, however in order to start that exploring, being aware of what plugins, themes and even core abilities exist is useful. That thinking took me on an adventure which saw the creation of the Abilities Explorer.
The what?
The Abilities Explorer is a simple plugin that shows the abilities on your site. It loads a page that summaries and splits into where the origin of the ability comes from.
Once you see the abilities you can do a few things with them to discover more:
- Test: Invoke Ability and Validate Input.
- View details: Description and Output.
The why?
Abilities are great, but it’s a new feature and this tool aims to both surface what is available on your site and also allow learning. I am not aiming to have a full on tool at this point, this was created rapidly as part of my own learning process.
There is no real intention beyond experimentation. Maybe it will help you find out when something isn’t firing, maybe you can be more knowledgeable about what is loading and isn’t. Maybe you just are able to step outside code and discover how simple and cool abilities are.
The how
I sat down with Cursor and spent some time learning myself about abilities, working with the prompts of Claude and also iterating. This got me to a rapid v1 which I have today and now I am releasing. I strongly believe in this approach to get ideas out but I am not suggesting this is ready for production, this is an experiment.
It’s very freshly brewed so there likely are code dragons and things to improve. I will iterate though and already want to work on adding seeing where issues might be and JSON documentation.
The where?
The Abilities Explorer lives just on GitHub. I have also made it public, so enjoy use as will and if others find it useful that rocks.
Props for early feedback, encouragement and reviews go to Jonathan Bossenger, Jonathan Wold and Amadeu Arderiu. Ideas are great but having them checked by humans helps us release them.