Core Abilities for WordPress 6.9

[justlevine]

This issue tracks the initial set of Abilities to ship in WordPress 6.9, based on the broader discussion in WordPress/ai#40.

The goal for 6.9 is to deliver a minimal, stable foundation of Abilities in core, while continuing to develop the broader catalog in the Abilities API plugin for future merges.

Todo

• Decide which core abilities we're including for 6.9
• Ship them

[JasonTheAdams]

If I recall correctly, I believe we'd mentioned two:

1. Getting site information
2. Getting user information

Let's see if we can get this nailed down today.

[justlevine]

I also think that the ability to find other abilities should be in 6.9. It's immediately useful without being speculative, and is a prereq for building more advanced "workflows" and indeterminate ability chains, We can even dogfood it and the entire Abilities API via our REST endpoint if we choose.

More on that last part in

• REST endpoints should themselves be Abilities #75

[Jameswlepage]

I've put together a proposal for the initial set of abilities in PR #108. The set includes:

• core/get-bloginfo - Retrieve individual site information fields
• core/get-current-user-info - Get current authenticated user data
• core/get-environment-type - Get WordPress environment type
• core/find-abilities - Discover all registered abilities

The reasoning behind this selection: these are the most atomic functions of WordPress that still provide real utility for agents. Even with just these three data abilities, an agent can understand site context, know who the current user is, and what environment they're in. The fourth ability (find-abilities) is a meta-capability for discovery.

These also span different eras of WordPress - bloginfo is very OG, environment type is newer - which felt like a good representation of the platform. They're intentionally atomic (like bloginfo being single-field per request) because we're still learning whether abilities should be highly specific or more generalized. This gives us a baseline to experiment with and could be extended in future releases based on real usage patterns.

Draft PR is ready for review when you get a chance.

[JasonTheAdams]

I'm actually a bit on the fence with the find-abilities ability. It's meta nature makes it a bit funky. Here's an example in one scenario: #108 (comment)

[Jameswlepage]

Yea, I was going back and forth with it and figured it could be included to experiment and open up the discussion. I think I'm actually leaning on not having it as an ability in this first go around, and instead maybe including it in /ai or /mcp-adapter and seeing how it works out. But interested in thoughts....