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Add onboarding guide to settings page #428
Description
The plugin depends heavily on AI connectors, which will be a new admin page. It's likely that without guidance, people trying the plugin for the first time won't know where to start or how to properly set things up to start testing.
I propose we show a <Guide /> the first time the settings page is loaded, and that we also consider including a button to open the guide (i.e.: "Getting started").
Suggested steps:
- Welcome: Brief intro to WordPress AI.
- Connect an AI provider: Info and link to the "Connectors" page with a link, explain they need to install a connector plugin and add API credentials.
- Enable experiments: Explain how to turn on AI features like title generation, image creation, etc.
I've created a quick prototype, which I'm sharing below. I quickly mocked up an image that I'm reusing on each step. If we decide to move forward with this idea, we could create step-specific images (or even animations) based on the new identity @shaunandrews is crafting (is there a link to a figma I could check?)
Activity
CacheMeOwside commentedon Apr 18, 2026
Hey @juanfra! I'd love to pick this up. The prototype looks great! I'm happy to get started once the Figma designs are available.
raftaar1191 commentedon Apr 18, 2026
Nice idea. It will be really helpful if you are trying it for the first time
jeffpaul commentedon Apr 21, 2026
Note that I met with @fcoveram today to talk about the initial Connectors and AI plugin user flows and will coordinate to get an issue opened with more design guidance, so I'm going to mark this as blocked until that issue is opened (likely in the Gutenberg repo as there may be some iterations to the Connectors page needed alongside ones to the AI plugin).
fcoveram commentedon Apr 22, 2026
I like the idea of showing features once landing on the wp-admin, but I am afraid that some users might not see it as it looks like a promo pop-over. It also doesn't show the feature in context, which makes it hard to follow.
I would love your thoughts on an idea @jeffpaul and I talked about and shared in #457
Implement AI plugin onboarding guide
Implement AI plugin onboarding guide
juanfra commentedon May 7, 2026
Thank you for sharing, and sorry I couldn't come back to this sooner.
I do believe the onboarding guide and improving the flow are two different things in the same space that can coexist and complement each other.
The guide is informative, whereas the flow improvements are "invisible" but completely transform the experience by simplifying onboarding.
We already have precedent for onboarding guides in the block editor and site editor, so in terms of design language it's something we can leverage that users already recognize. And in the worst case they just ignore them, and then they have the flow improvements.
jeffpaul commentedon May 7, 2026
Yeah, doing a bit more to show something like the Imagen Feature in the onboarding would be helpful.
jeffpaul commentedon May 7, 2026
Closing this in favor of a much more lightweight handling of onboarding as noted in #457.