Summary

This issue tracks the Pathway to 7.0 for the AI plugin and related core integration work. The goal is to make the plugin the canonical user-facing AI experience, while core provides the foundational AI client/runtime.

With WP AI Client merged into 7.0, there's now some work to do in this AI plugin to bring real features to everyday users. First, this is a good comment to review, summarizing a review session with Matt and the community, which drives much of the direction for this issue.

Product Direction

• Evolve the plugin from an experiments-only framing to a canonical AI plugin for WordPress.
• Keep experiments (similar to Gutenberg plugin patterns), but clearly separate and promote graduated stable (and impressive) features.
• Use this plugin as the primary user-facing AI story for 7.0-era WordPress.

Why This Matters

• Core AI client in 7.0 is foundational/developer-facing.
• Users still need a visible, installable plugin experience to get immediate value.
• Provider connection + plugin onboarding should be a cohesive flow, especially during upgrades.

Immediate Technical Path (6.9 -> 7.0)

• Maintain compatibility with both environments:
  • WP 6.9: bundled WP AI client/providers path.
  • WP 7.0: prefer core AI client when available.
• Remove hard assumptions about credentials page slug availability.
• Provide robust fallback credential handling (registered page if present, otherwise env/constants guidance).
• Ensure provider/credentials detection works consistently across both paths.

Core Integration Needs

• Expose a stable way to resolve/open the AI credentials settings screen (no slug guessing).
• Ensure core can pull in preconfigured providers in a dedicated credentials page.
• Provide clear extension points for plugin UX and onboarding.

Feature Audit + Release Narrative

• Audit current experiments and identify which can be elevated to stable user-facing features.
• Target at least 1 standout feature, ideally 3.
• (A suggestion:) prioritize image editing as the strongest candidate for a dramatic/demo-worthy feature

Scope Decisions Already Made

• This plugin can ship independently of the exact 7.0 core release date, but must be ready by then.
• Markdown experiment in this plugin is closed; related work is moving to core contributor efforts around the WP HTML processor.
• Further improvement and design needs to be applied to the providers/credentials screen.

Proposed Workstreams

1. Runtime Compatibility & Credentials UX (6.9/7.0 bridge).
2. Core Credentials Contract + Provider Registration UX.
3. Feature Graduation (Stable vs Labs) + plugin rebrand copy.
4. Flagship Features for launch narrative (image editing first).
5. Upgrade/install funnel and onboarding polish.

Exit Criteria

• Seamless behavior on both 6.9 and 7.0.
• Credentials flow is discoverable and non-fragile. Current thinking is that this "Credentials screen" supports our AI Providers (+ API keys) but can grow to support credentials for other services too (ie; central place to store Google Maps API key)
• Canonical AI plugin positioning is reflected in UI/copy/docs.
• At least one highly compelling feature is production-ready, ideally 3

cc @mtias