Pathway to 7.0

[Jameswlepage]

Summary

This issue tracks the Pathway to 7.0 for the AI plugin and related core integration work. The goal is to make the plugin the canonical user-facing AI experience, while core provides the foundational AI client/runtime.

With WP AI Client merged into 7.0, there's now some work to do in this AI plugin to bring real features to everyday users. First, this is a good comment to review, summarizing a review session with Matt and the community, which drives much of the direction for this issue.

Product Direction

• Evolve the plugin from an experiments-only framing to a canonical AI plugin for WordPress.
• Keep experiments (similar to Gutenberg plugin patterns), but clearly separate and promote graduated stable (and impressive) features.
• Use this plugin as the primary user-facing AI story for 7.0-era WordPress.

Why This Matters

• Core AI client in 7.0 is foundational/developer-facing.
• Users still need a visible, installable plugin experience to get immediate value.
• Provider connection + plugin onboarding should be a cohesive flow, especially during upgrades.

Immediate Technical Path (6.9 -> 7.0)

• Maintain compatibility with both environments:
  • WP 6.9: bundled WP AI client/providers path.
  • WP 7.0: prefer core AI client when available.
• Remove hard assumptions about credentials page slug availability.
• Provide robust fallback credential handling (registered page if present, otherwise env/constants guidance).
• Ensure provider/credentials detection works consistently across both paths.

Core Integration Needs

• Expose a stable way to resolve/open the AI credentials settings screen (no slug guessing).
• Ensure core can pull in preconfigured providers in a dedicated credentials page.
• Provide clear extension points for plugin UX and onboarding.

Feature Audit + Release Narrative

• Audit current experiments and identify which can be elevated to stable user-facing features.
• Target at least 1 standout feature, ideally 3.
• (A suggestion:) prioritize image editing as the strongest candidate for a dramatic/demo-worthy feature

Scope Decisions Already Made

• This plugin can ship independently of the exact 7.0 core release date, but must be ready by then.
• Markdown experiment in this plugin is closed; related work is moving to core contributor efforts around the WP HTML processor.
• Further improvement and design needs to be applied to the providers/credentials screen.

Proposed Workstreams

1. Runtime Compatibility & Credentials UX (6.9/7.0 bridge).
2. Core Credentials Contract + Provider Registration UX.
3. Feature Graduation (Stable vs Labs) + plugin rebrand copy.
4. Flagship Features for launch narrative (image editing first).
5. Upgrade/install funnel and onboarding polish.

Exit Criteria

• Seamless behavior on both 6.9 and 7.0.
• Credentials flow is discoverable and non-fragile. Current thinking is that this "Credentials screen" supports our AI Providers (+ API keys) but can grow to support credentials for other services too (ie; central place to store Google Maps API key)
• Canonical AI plugin positioning is reflected in UI/copy/docs.
• At least one highly compelling feature is production-ready, ideally 3

cc @mtias

[Jameswlepage]

Tracking update for the 7.0 pathway:

PR #249 is the implementation PR for the Runtime Compatibility & Credentials UX (6.9 -> 7.0 bridge) portion of this issue.

Scope covered in #249:

• Supports both 6.9 (bundled AI client path) and 7.0 (core AI client path).
• Removes hard assumptions about a credentials settings page slug.
• Adds fail-soft credentials UX (warnings + env/constants guidance) instead of hard failure.
• Improves provider registration/credential application compatibility across core and bundled paths.
• Adds integration test coverage for bootstrap/helpers behavior in both modes.

PR link: #249

This does not close the full issue; it addresses the immediate technical bridge workstream.

[dkotter]

Keep experiments (similar to Gutenberg plugin patterns), but clearly separate and promote graduated stable (and impressive) features

Curious if we have any specific details/thoughts/ideas on what constitutes a stable (and even more vague, impressive) feature?

(A suggestion:) prioritize image editing as the strongest candidate for a dramatic/demo-worthy feature

I know this was the main "impressive" feature mentioned but would love more specifics on what we're looking for here, both in terms of what we mean by image editing and where we'd like to see this implemented within the UI.

[jeffpaul]

Making note of what I see as the tasks needed to complete the effort that @Jameswlepage describes in this issue...

• update to leveraging the WP AI Client in WP core (and the knock-on effect of leveraging the AI provider plugins via the Connectors screen)
• update the plugin WP required version AND tested-up-to version 7.0
• all tasks already described in Rename plugin from “AI Experiments” to “AI” and define feature vs experiment classification #234
• consider moving the plugin from the Beta plugins to the Featured plugins list on https://wordpress.org/plugins/
• consider adding the plugin to the Featured and/or Recommended plugins tabs in WP Admin > Plugins > Add Plugin screen
• promote the plugin in post-upgrade/install flows in WP 7.0 as described in https://core.trac.wordpress.org/ticket/64711
• ensure we have 1-more AI Provider plugins besides the Anthropic, Google, and OpenAI ones listed on the Connectors page so users have additional connector plugins to choose from
• ensure preexisting AI Credentials map to activated Connectors (this might require users activating related AI provider plugins)

Seamless behavior on both 6.9 and 7.0.

To me this is not necessary as we're talking about less than 4,000 downloads with 42.2% of those not on the current 0.3.0 release. Shifting to 7.0 only allows us to ignore conditions that were mostly temporary during the 6.9 release cycle and not worth carrying that tech debt forward when we can dramatically simplify the plugin codebase and plan for 7.0 as the minimum.