Thanks for the kind words, I really appreciate it 🙂 Even though you’re the first to ask, I think this is an important question and it deserves a proper reply.
Yes, I’ve been following the Abilities API very closely (the WordPress team actually contacted me about it last year). I’m not opposed to adopting it at all, but for now I’m actually waiting for the ecosystem to mature a bit before integrating it into AI Engine.
A few reasons:
- No major reference implementation yet. I’m mainly waiting for at least one widely-used plugin (50K+ installs) to implement Abilities in a genuinely useful way. Right now, most integrations feel more like yay, we registered a few abilities!… than something really practical, so it’s hard to know which patterns will become standard.
- Best practices are still forming. The API is very new and has some quirks (categories first, strict timing, schema and permission overhead). The documentation has also come contradictions. I’m pretty sure things will change, and I’d rather not lock AI Engine into an approach that might soon feel outdated.
- AI Engine + Code Engine already does the job. Much of what Abilities aims to enable is already possible today through my little ecosystem 😼 Code Engine lets you create callable functions, those can be used by AI Engine and exposed through MCP, and the current MCP + function callback approach is actually very simple and works well (automation, writing posts, updating media entries, creating or modifying themes/plugins, etc.). I have also connected AI Engine to SEO Engine and it works really nicely.
I tried to get some traction around this a while ago on Reddit (here). It was probably too early, and it might still be a bit early today. That said, I’m pretty sure that this year users will increasingly want to plug tools like Claude Code (and others) directly into their WordPress sites, and they’ll naturally look for the most convenient solution. On my side, I’ll keep improving what already exists, adopt Abilities when it actually makes sense, and adapt as it evolves.
But at the moment, adding Abilities to AI Engine would mostly mean more code and more complexity, without clear benefits for users yet, especially while conventions are still settling.
However, I do hope/expect Abilities to become important. Once there’s a clear adoption signal and a strong real-world implementation from a major plugin, I’ll be happy to add support in AI Engine in a clean way, and make it consume abilities from other plugins too.
In the meantime, I’m watching closely, experimenting, and staying ready to move, as always! 🙂
