127. Connectors

WordPress 7.0 will include a new section for connecting to artificial intelligence providers.

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Program transcript

Hello, I’m Alicia Ireland, and you’re listening to WPpodcast, bringing the weekly news from the WordPress Community.

In this episode, you’ll find the information from February 16 to 22, 2026.

Just 24 hours before the expected release of the first beta version of WordPress 7.0, Matt Mullenweg, co founder of WordPress, suggested a new section in Settings called Connectors, similar to Claude’s connections panel, where with a couple of clicks you can connect to AI providers. This is mainly meant to remove the friction of every plugin asking for API keys or similar and storing them in plain text in the database.

Shortly after, a review process started on how to build this system and include it, if possible, in Beta 2, although it is more likely to land in Beta 3.

The three existing plugins from the AI team have moved from being external projects to being able to integrate directly into WordPress core, with the idea that Connectors will have the usual extensibility via hooks and filters, making it easy to add new ones.

The ones that are confirmed for this first phase are Anthropic, meaning Claude, Google with Gemini, and OpenAI with ChatGPT, although OpenRouter and Grok could also make it in.

So, when WordPress 7.0 Beta 1 was expected to ship, it did not happen. It arrived 24 hours later. Around that time, there was a meeting with Matt, along with Core contributors.

The WordPress 7.0 product review meeting focused on aligning priorities so that the release truly feels like a “WordPress 7 moment”, not just a collection of invisible improvements. They reviewed the status of planned features and stressed that anything that lands must be discoverable and have a clear user journey. One of the main highlights was real time collaboration in the editor, replacing the “post locked” system with automatic co editing when two users open the same post. The default transport will be HTTP polling, compatible with nearly any hosting, with an option for WebSockets in more advanced environments, and with conservative concurrency limits. Sensitive areas were discussed, such as sessions with different permission levels, storage of the collaborative document, and compatibility with classic meta boxes, which will likely disable collaboration by default.

Another major area was visual revisions inside the editor, with ideas to improve attribution in multiuser scenarios, highlight meaningful changes, and allow more flexible comparisons, similar to GitHub. They also covered a visual modernization of wp-admin through high impact CSS changes, buttons, shadows, rounded corners, and loading indicators, so the admin feels more current. The dashboard was discussed as a potential more customizable “home screen”, with remixable widgets and ideas like “On this day”, along with a possible dedicated plugin directory category for dashboard widgets.

On the platform side, they highlighted PHP only block registration as a bridge for more PHP oriented developers, consolidation of the Abilities API, and the need to make the Command Palette more visible in the admin bar. Artificial intelligence was one of the most strategic topics. The WP AI Client is seen as key infrastructure to avoid fragmentation across providers, but there is concern that if it lands without a clear interface it will remain powerful but invisible. They asked for AI configuration to be visible by default and to guide users to install connectors, with at least one “wow” flow after connecting, with image editing as the leading candidate.

They also reviewed navigation improvements, new blocks like Icon and Breadcrumb, media and upload optimizations, and advances in patterns and typography. Markdown is expected to be postponed to 7.1 or later. Next steps include defining clear policies for collaboration across different permission levels, polishing the collaboration UI, visually modernizing wp-admin, making the Command Palette more visible, structuring the AI onboarding experience more effectively, and selecting solid AI features to ship alongside the release.

The overall goal is for WordPress 7.0 to combine deep technical advances with visible improvements that clearly communicate progress to end users.

So, what is included in WordPress 7.0 Beta 1?

WordPress 7.0 is a broad update across both the editing experience and the admin area, with the goal of making the change noticeable for users and teams. The first thing we will see is a significant change in admin colors, using the “WordPress colors”, along with changes to form styling and the overall admin UI, as a first step toward aligning more closely with the editor’s forms and views.

The most visible new feature is real time collaboration, allowing multiple people to edit the same post or page simultaneously, with data synchronization and shared notes. During the beta, this feature is optional to make testing easier. This is complemented by visual revisions integrated into the editor, enabling graphical comparisons between versions, and smoother transitions between dashboard screens for a more modern and continuous experience.

Customization also becomes more prominent. Adaptive visibility controls are introduced to show or hide blocks depending on screen size, substantial improvements to pattern editing with new modes such as Spotlight or Isolated Editor, and more design tools such as text indentation, columns, image proportions, and dimension controls.

The Navigation block has been simplified and now supports configurable mobile overlays as template parts. New blocks are added, such as Icons and Breadcrumbs, improvements to the Heading block, video backgrounds in the Cover block, a responsive Grid, and lightbox support in galleries. In addition, the Font Library is enabled for all themes, with its own menu entry, and media processing moves largely to the browser, reducing server load and speeding up image workflows.

On the technical side, WordPress 7.0 significantly expands the developer toolbox. The WP AI Client lands, finally and definitively, in core, as a layer that allows plugins and themes to connect to AI models from multiple providers without direct dependencies, along with the evolution of the Abilities API and its client side version for registering and running abilities in the browser. PHP only block registration is enabled with automatic control generation, Block Bindings are expanded for custom dynamic blocks, and components such as DataForm and DataViews are strengthened. CodeMirror is also updated, and groundwork is laid for future extensibility. Overall, the release combines collaboration, visual modernization, more design control, and a technical foundation ready for AI and advanced workflows.

But where is all the artificial intelligence? If you install Beta 1, you will not see it anywhere. In practice, the feeling is that the admin colors changed and not much else. That is not entirely true, because there is a lot of plumbing that we will likely see before the first release candidate.

And as for the WordPress community itself, another discussion is opening. Matt has hinted to the Polyglots team that WordPress is going to be fully translated. What he is proposing is that, given the speed of language models, what tools would be needed to translate all strings into all languages, and that it is likely that an organization such as Google could offer the most advanced technology to do it automatically.

In addition, the Developer Blog explains how to extend the editor’s device preview dropdown menu to include new options, such as a social media previewer, and the Playground team has added the ability to launch phpMyAdmin from the console interface.

And finally, this podcast is distributed under a Creative Commons license as a derivative version of the podcast in Spanish; you can find all the links for more information, and the podcast in other languages, at WPpodcast .org.

Thanks for listening, and until the next episode!