WordPress Development with AI Agents
Use a coding agent to build themes, plugins and customisations on real WordPress sites, and know exactly when to stop trusting it.
- Modules
- 06
- Lessons
- 18
- Reading time
- 10H 15M
- Words
- 29,657
What you will be able to do
- Describe what a coding agent does and does not do, and pick one for PHP work.
- Set up a repository and a local WordPress the agent can actually run commands against.
- Scaffold a classic theme and a block theme from a prompt, and read the output before shipping it.
- Build a plugin with custom post types, admin screens and correct capability checks.
- Work on a codebase you did not write, including debugging a fatal.
- Recognise hallucinated functions, invented hooks and escaping that looks right but is not.
Before you start
Working knowledge of PHP and WordPress, and comfort on a command line. A local WordPress 7.0 install and at least one coding agent with a subscription or API key.
Every course on this site so far has taught a person to do the work. This one teaches a person to direct something else doing it, which is a different skill and a harder one to teach honestly.
The problem with most writing about AI and WordPress is that it is either a demo — a prompt, a screenshot of something that looks like a theme, and a conclusion that the job is over — or a dismissal. Neither helps. What actually happens when you point a coding agent at a WordPress site is more specific than either: it will scaffold a plugin in ninety seconds and then confidently call a function that has never existed. It will write escaping that looks correct until you read it properly. It will restructure a file you asked it to change one line in.
So this course is built around a working method rather than a tool. Modules 1 and 2 set up the two things that decide whether any of this works — an agent that can run commands against a real WordPress install, and a repository with the rules written down. Modules 3 and 4 build a theme and a plugin by prompt, reading every line before it ships. Module 5 is the situation most people actually face: someone else's site, and a change that has to be made without breaking it. Module 6 is where it breaks, which is the module that makes the other five worth reading.
The tools named in the title will be out of date before this course is. The method will not be, and neither will the failure modes — invented hooks and unescaped output are properties of the approach, not of a particular release.
Curriculum
6 modules, 18 lessons
The tools, and what they actually are
What a coding agent does when you point it at a PHP repository, which ones are worth using for WordPress, and the rules file that stops it guessing.
3 lessons · 1H 25M
A development environment an agent can drive
A local WordPress it can reach, error output it can read, and the commit discipline that keeps a bad change recoverable.
3 lessons · 1H 40M
Building a theme by prompt
Scaffolding a classic theme and a block theme, from theme.json outward, and reading generated CSS before it ships.
3 lessons · 1H 40M
Building a plugin by prompt
Plugin structure the WordPress way, custom post types and admin screens with real capability checks, and WooCommerce data through the hooks that matter.
3 lessons · 1H 50M
Working on a site someone else built
Reading an unfamiliar codebase, changing a theme you did not write, and debugging a fatal with the agent in the loop.
3 lessons · 1H 45M
Where it breaks, and shipping anyway
Hallucinated functions and invented hooks, escaping that looks right and is not, and how to test generated code before it reaches a customer.
3 lessons · 1H 55M
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