This post summarizes the WordPress Playground team’s biweekly meetings held on March 13 and March 27, 2026. These meetings are open to all contributors and community members.
March 13, 2026
The meeting was facilitated by @fellyph.
Announcements
my.wordpress.net — The team published an official release post for my.wordpress.net and has been collecting community feedback.
Two new blog posts are available on the Playground Blog:
- Simplify your workflow with the new Playground CLI start command — Introduces the new
startcommand, designed to simplify local WordPress environment setup. - How WordPress Playground cut PHP.wasm binary sizes by 122 MB — Covers two compiler flag changes that reduced PHP.wasm binary sizes from 888 MB to 766 MB.
WordPress 7.0 beta 5 is available for testing on Playground. Contributors are encouraged to test their plugins and themes ahead of the next WordPress release at playground.wordpress.net/?wp=beta.
MCP Server — WordPress Playground now has an MCP server. Usage instructions are available on the npm page. A dedicated blog post is in progress.
WASM I/O Conference — Part of the Playground team will be presenting at the WASM I/O conference in Barcelona, March 19–20.
Updates from contributors
Website — Received reliability improvements, including updates to file handling and session persistence, plus integration of the new MCP server.
PHP-WASM — Updated with performance improvements, the new binary optimization strategy, and memory usage fixes.
Docs — Two new guides are now available:
Both guides received translations in Portuguese, Spanish, and French.
CLI — Updates focus on performance and developer experience. A native php command now enables direct script execution and WP-CLI-style workflows. The testing suite now uses local PHARs to remove external download dependencies.
@fellyph — Created the two new guides above, drafted the MCP server blog post, drafted a Vitest guide, and worked on a design proposal for the new Wizard page for my.wordpress.net.
March 27, 2026
The meeting was facilitated by @fellyph.
Announcements
MCP Server post published — The post Connect AI coding agents to WordPress Playground with MCP is now live on the Playground Blog. A video walkthrough is also available.
25 pull requests were merged since the last meeting.
my.wordpress.net — Received significant attention from the media and community. The team thanks everyone who shared feedback. The modal design has been updated, removing the purple background. iOS experience improvements are still under investigation, with thanks to @ashfame and @zaerl for looking into the reported issues.
Website PRs
Improvements focus on resilience and edge-case compatibility: better handling of download failures (#3348), fixes for Playground breaking inside in-app browsers like LinkedIn (#3387, #3392), more flexible blueprint ZIP uploads (#3223), My WordPress branding updates (#3390), and added WebKit and Playwright E2E tests (#3379, #3405).
CLI PRs
The CLI now automatically restarts with JSPI support enabled, without manual Node flags (#3281), and uses a faster built-in method for process checking during temp directory cleanup (#3395). Additional improvements include module-boundary linting (#3410), a new Playwright-based benchmarking suite for site editor startup and interaction times (#3408), and silencing harmless streaming errors caused by client disconnects (#3397).
Docs PRs
GitHub Releases are now auto-generated after every npm publish (#3429, #3430). The Claude agent’s permissions have been hardened: rm commands are now blocked (#3398), and allow/deny lists have been updated to prevent destructive actions while permitting read-only git operations (#3373). Dependabot’s config was also fixed to properly exclude directories (#3426).
SQLite
- #3428 — Updated the SQLite database path from
.ht.sqliteto.ht.sqlite.phpto match the latest SQLite integration plugin. - #3435 — Reverted that path update.
PHP-WASM
- #3417 — Fixed Redis extension corruption in WASM32 caused by a variadic ABI mismatch.
- #3399 — Fixed a race condition in
proc_openwhere pipe writes could crash after streams were already closed.
Updates from contributors
@fellyph — Published the E2E Testing with Playwright guide, published the MCP server post, drafted the Vitest guide, and started writing about recent architecture changes.
@brandonpayton and @ashfame — Exploring performance improvements for the Playground CLI, including HTTP/2 and static file serving optimizations. @brandonpayton is also focusing on PR reviews.
@adamzielinski — Working on a WordPress site migration plugin. A working Blueprint with a demo is available. This will be a useful integration for working on existing sites directly within Playground.
@bero — Focused on enabling AI agents to use Playground. A Blueprint skill is now available, and agents will soon be able to interact with the Playground website via playgroundSites methods from DevTools. Experimental WebMCP support is also being added. Next steps include more MCP tools and skills to improve the agent experience.
@janjakes — Back to SQLite work, focusing on monorepo setup, automation, and the upcoming v3 release.
Open floor
@fellyph asked whether contributors prefer a monthly report or a per-meeting report for the Playground newsletter, noting concern about email frequency for subscribers.
The next meeting will be held on April 10, 2026. All are welcome.