Playground Team Meeting Summary: November 28, 2025

The Playground team held its weekly meeting on November 28, 2025. Here’s a summary of the announcements, contributor updates, and discussions.

Facilitator: @fellyph

Announcements

Xdebug support is now available

Debugging PHP code in WordPress Playground just got easier. The team published a detailed guide on debugging with Xdebug, now available in both PHP-WASM CLI and WP Playground CLI. This feature allows developers to step through code, inspect variables, and troubleshoot issues directly within their preferred IDE—including VS Code and PhpStorm.

Preview Gutenberg branches in your browser

A new feature allows developers to preview Gutenberg development branches directly in the browser. Test the latest trunk changes or explore feature branches without creating a pull request or setting up a local environment.

Blueprint editor improvements

The Playground website now includes an improved Blueprint editor with better UI integration and autocomplete functionality. This makes creating and editing Blueprints more intuitive for developers building custom Playground configurations.

Playground CLI updates

Several improvements landed in the Playground CLI:

• Readable help messages: Improved formatting and readability of CLI help output.
• TERM=dumb compatibility: CLI behavior now works correctly in TERM=dumb environments.
• File locking tests: Added tests for file locking in the CLI.
• SQLite logging fix: Fixed plugin logging behavior when skipping logging is requested.

PHP WASM improvements

The PHP WASM package received significant updates:

• Dynamic intl extension: Thanks to @Yannick‘s work, Playground web can now load dynamic extensions. The intl extension is the first web dynamic extension, enabling internationalization support. This architecture unlocks a future where Playground loads a minimal PHP core and downloads larger extensions like gd and libxml only when needed.
• GD library upgrade: Updated to version 2.3.3, enabling more recent image processing features.
• Emscripten upgrade: Updated from version 4.0.5 to 4.0.19.

Blueprints and SQLite

• Multiline SQL queries: The runSql Blueprint step now supports multi-line SQL queries.
• SQLite metadata: Enabled SQLITE_ENABLE_COLUMN_METADATA and updated bundled SQLite options.

Updates from contributors

@fellyph documented Xdebug for PHP WASM and gathered Xdebug examples. He also presented at WordPress meetups in Belo Horizonte and Rio de Janeiro, Brazil. Props to @Caio Ferreira and @gugaalves for organizing those events.

@zieladam shipped several features:

• A visual Blueprints gallery featuring complete starter site Blueprints
• “Try it in Playground” GitHub Workflow for WordPress repositories
• GD library upgrade to 2.3.3

He’s also helping @janjakes with final reviews for phpMyAdmin integration on playground.wordpress.net, and exploring a Blueprint bundle editor for creating Blueprints that ship with additional assets.

@yannickdecat upgraded Emscripten from 4.0.5 to 4.0.19 and added the intl dynamic extension to PHP.wasm Web.

Open floor

Running Composer-dependent plugins

@mujuonly raised a question about running plugins that use the PHP AI SDK with Composer dependencies. The team discussed that Composer isn’t installed by default in Playground.

Current workaround: Download composer.phar and run php composer.phar install using either a Blueprint or PHP functions like proc_open().

Future improvements: The team discussed potentially downloading Composer automatically the first time the command runs, which would make it work seamlessly in Blueprints. A terminal UI for typing commands like composer install It is also directly on the wishlist.

Get involved

Join the Playground team meetings at the #playground Slack channel. Everyone is welcome—introduce yourself and bring topics for the open floor discussion.

Props: @zaerl, @Yannick, @zieladam, @Dilip Modhavadiya, @SirLouen, @gugaalves, @eduardozulian, @janjakes, @Caio Ferreira, @mujuonly