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WCEU 2026 Core AI Contributor Day

The Core AI Team is excited to be part of Contributor Day at WordCamp Europe 2026, taking place June 4, 2026, at ICE Kraków. Whether you’re an engineer, designer, researcher, or just curious about AI, there’s something for you at Contributor Day, and we’re looking forward to meeting you there!

Read on to find out how to prepare and what to expect at the Core AI Team table.

⏰ Important Times

All Times are in Central European Summer Time (CEST)

08.30 – Registration
09.15 – Opening and welcome
10.00 – Contributing to WordPress
12.15 – Group photo
12.30 – Lunch
14.00 – Contributing to WordPress
16.30 – Teams summaries and wrap-up

Remote contributors are welcome to join via the #contributor-day or #core-ai Slack channels.

Meet the Table Leads

We’re excited to be joined by the following contributors who will be leading the Core AI Team table:

In-Person Table Leads

Additionally, Gajendra Singh (@gajendrasingh) will be joining us as Digital Table Lead, providing remote support for folks on the ground and participating virtually.

Other veteran Core AI contributors and team members will also be dropping by in person and online throughout the day to help out and lend their expertise.

Core AI Team Table Focus

There are many ways to contribute to the Core AI Team depending on your background and comfort level:

  • Testing, QA, and Feedback: With the latest WordPress 7.0 release and v1.0 of the canonical AI plugin, there’s a lot of new and experimental AI-related features to test and provide feedback on.
  • Documentation: Enhance the clarity and comprehensiveness of the AI Team Handbook, project-specific developer docs, and user-facing guidelines, tutorials, and other resources.
  • Good First Issues: There are a number of issues in various Core AI Team repositories and even WordPress Core that are ideal for new contributors to get involved with, and we’ll be sharing links and highlighting some of these throughout the day.

Remember: it’s “Contributor Day”, not “Contribution Day”, and our focus for the day revolves around finding meaningful ways to contribute, and not necessarily landing a specific patch. If you’re working on individual Trac Tickets or GitHub Issues, keep in mind:

  • Work started on Contributor may land in 7.1 or later.
  • That’s normal!
  • Open source is iterative.

We encourage contributors to pick tickets that can make progress in a few focused hours – while remaining flexible in case release-related priorities arise.

Not sure where to start? Talk to a team lead at the table or on Slack and we will help you find the right task.

What the Core AI Team is building

The Core AI Team is dedicated to exploring and coordinating AI projects across the WordPress ecosystem, providing the technical “Building Blocks” needed for users and developers to access, use, and implement powerful AI features:

  • AI Client: Shipped as part of WordPress 7.0, the AI Client provides a standardized API for interacting with various AI providers. It wraps the wordpress/php-ai-client Composer library.
  • Abilities API: Added to WordPress 6.9, the Abilities API provides a standardized ways to register and discover discrete reusable functionality (“abilities”) that can be called reliably across different contexts and environments. While not AI-specific, Abilities are what allow us to reliably build and integrate with AI functionality at breakneck speeds without worrying about underlying implementation details.
  • AI Plugin: V1.0 of the canonical AI plugin shipped alongside WordPress 7.0, includes a growing set of AI-powered features and experiments, and is home to the first “official” user-facing AI functionality in WordPress.
  • MCP Adapter: A WordPress plugin that allows AI harnesses like Claude and ChatGPT to connect directly to WordPress by translating the Abilities API into a Model Context Protocol (MCP) server. MCP Adapter is currently distributed as a Composer library, the plugin will soon be submitted to WordPress.org for wider use and adoption.
  • WP Bench: A benchmarking framework for evaluating AI performance, quality, and reliability across different providers and use cases within WordPress.
  • Agent Skills: Uses the AGENTS.md specification to provide reusable instructions that AI agents can follow to perform specific tasks.

Prepare at home

To make the most out of Contributor Day, it’s essential to come prepared.

Downloading and installing software takes time, and between spotty wifi and the rush of trying to get set up quickly can lead to missing steps and lots of frustration. While the specific tools you’ll need will depend on the area you want to contribute to, here are some general recommendations:

Local WordPress Environment

  • For testing of core WordPress 7.0 features, or the latest versions of the AI plugin or the MCP Adapter, any local WordPress environment with the latest version of WordPress will work, such as:
  • For code contributions or testing PRs and patches, you’ll need to set up Docker or a local environment with the following:
    • Node.js / npm
    • Composer
    • A working local install
    • Python 3.10+ and pip (for WP Bench)

AI Provider

The AI features in WordPress 7.0 require an AI Provider to be connected in order to work, and you may use the Connector plugin of your choice to connect to a cloud or local AI Provider.

Free Provider API Keys

It’s best to be prepared for the likelihood of spotty or even no wifi. Even if you are planning to use a cloud provider, we recommend setting up a local provider as a fallback option:

Helpful Resources

👀 Looking Ahead

WCEU Contributor Days are always special, and this year is no different. While the foundational AI features are now merged into WordPress core, there’s still lots to do. From testing and building out new AI features, to improving the tooling around how WordPress consumes and interacts with AI. Your contributions help the millions of WordPress users, builders, and developers around the world make the most of AI for their WordPress sites.

Interested in Contributor Day but unsure if Core AI is the right fit for you? Check out Make WordPress’s Find Your Team tool to discover other opportunities.

Props to @gajendrasingh and @justlevine for helping write this post, and @gziolo and @jeffpaul for pre-publish review.