WordPress AI building blocks: Abilities API, AI Client and MCP Adapter

WordPress now ships its own AI foundations: a way for plugins to declare what they can do (the Abilities API), a provider-agnostic client for calling AI models from PHP (the AI Client), and an adapter that exposes abilities to external agents over MCP (the MCP Adapter). This guide explains what each building block does, how they fit together, and what you can build on them today.

What AI features are in WordPress core?

Three layers, arriving across two releases. The Abilities API appeared with WordPress 6.9 in late 2025 and matured in 7.0; the AI Client shipped with WordPress 7.0 in May 2026; and the MCP Adapter, maintained by the WordPress AI team, exposes registered abilities to MCP clients while its move from plugin to core completes. Core ships no AI provider and sends nothing to external services without explicit configuration: the layers are infrastructure, and what runs on them is up to the site.

What is the WordPress Abilities API?

The Abilities API is a registry of what a site can do, in machine-readable form. A plugin registers each capability with a namespaced name, a description, a JSON Schema for input and output, an execute callback and a permission callback. The point is discoverability: instead of an AI agent guessing which functions exist, the site declares its abilities, each one typed and permission-checked.

How to register an ability

add_action('abilities_api_init', function () {
    wp_register_ability('my-plugin/summarize-orders', [
        'label'               => __('Summarize orders', 'my-plugin'),
        'description'         => __('Returns order totals for a date range.', 'my-plugin'),
        'input_schema'        => [
            'type'       => 'object',
            'properties' => [
                'from' => ['type' => 'string', 'format' => 'date'],
                'to'   => ['type' => 'string', 'format' => 'date'],
            ],
            'required'   => ['from', 'to'],
        ],
        'output_schema'       => ['type' => 'object'],
        'execute_callback'    => 'my_plugin_summarize_orders',
        'permission_callback' => fn () => current_user_can('manage_woocommerce'),
    ]);
});

Once registered, the ability exists independently of any AI: it can be called from PHP, listed in tooling, and exposed over MCP.

What is the WordPress AI Client?

The AI Client is a provider-agnostic PHP API for calling AI models from WordPress code: one interface for prompts and responses, with the concrete provider configured per site. For plugin developers it means writing AI features once instead of integrating each provider separately. It is the outbound half of the story: WordPress code calling a model, where the other two layers are about agents calling WordPress.

What is the MCP Adapter?

The MCP Adapter puts registered abilities on the wire for external AI agents, speaking the Model Context Protocol. Rather than turning every ability into its own tool, the adapter exposes three: discover abilities, get ability info, and execute ability. An agent lists what the site offers, reads the schema of the one it needs, and calls it. Abilities opt in to this exposure; registering one does not publish it to agents by itself.

How do they fit together?

Bottom to top: the Abilities API is the registry, the MCP Adapter is the door for agents, the AI Client is the site’s own line out to models. A request from an AI agent flows: MCP client → MCP Adapter → ability → its callbacks, with permissions checked at the ability level. The division of labor is clean: plugins declare capabilities, core handles protocol and discovery, agents compose the pieces into tasks.

How does Novamira relate to the core building blocks?

Novamira builds on exactly this foundation: it registers its abilities through the Abilities API and speaks to clients through the MCP Adapter, which is why its requirements start at WordPress 6.9. On top of the foundation it adds what agents need for real site work: a broad ability catalog out of the box (content, media, files, database, PHP execution with crash recovery), OAuth sign-in flows for the major AI clients, skills and per-site context, and page builder expertise for Elementor and Bricks in Novamira Pro. The MCP server guide places all of this in the wider category, and how it works shows the architecture.

What can you build with the building blocks?

• As a plugin developer: register abilities for your plugin’s operations, and every MCP-connected agent can use them, with your schemas and your permission checks. The ability you register today is the integration you do not have to build per AI vendor tomorrow.
• As a site builder: connect an agent to a site whose plugins register abilities, and tasks compose across them: the agent discovers what is available and chains the calls.
• As a product team: use the AI Client for in-product AI features without hard-coding a provider, and keep the choice of model per site.

The official reference lives on the Make WordPress AI team site and in the WordPress developer documentation; for the agent side in practice, the connection guides are the fastest way to see abilities called by a real client.