WordPress Developers Say New AI Feature Does Not Belong In Core via @sejournal, @martinibuster

A new WordPress proposal seeks to integrate a new Knowledge Custom Post Type directly into WordPress Core. The new feature, which is already in Gutenberg, functions as a centralized repository of guidelines and knowledge about a website for use by people like editors and contributors, as well as for internal AI agents and tools. The proposal quickly received a thumbs down from developers, who generally felt like this feature is out of touch with what users actually need.

What Is A Custom Post Type (CPT)?

Currently in WordPress, there are two kinds of Post Types:

  1. Posts
  2. and Pages.

WordPress can also be extended with Custom Post Type (CPT) plugins that enable site owners to create new post types that are customized for a specific purpose. For example, the WooCommerce plugin uses a custom post type called “product” that enables shopkeepers to manage products.

Proposal To Merge A Knowledge Post Type

The Knowledge Custom Post Type was proposed in February 2026 and a month later it was integrated into the Gutenberg plugin as an Experimental feature for the following knowledge types:

“Site — Your site’s goals, personality, target audience, and industry. Foundational context that any tool or contributor can reference.

Copy — Tone, voice, brand personality, and vocabulary preferences. An editorial style guide, living inside WordPress.

Images — Preferred image styles, colors, moods, and subjects to include or avoid.

Blocks — Per-block-type rules for content blocks. For example, specifying that Paragraph blocks should favor short sentences, or that Image blocks should always include descriptive alt text.

Additional — Anything else: accessibility requirements, linking practices, formatting conventions, or rules that don’t fit the categories above.”

WordPress Fuels Confusion Over Who The New Feature Is For

WordPress intends to merge the Knowledge Custom Post Type (CPT) into core so that all who work on a website, including humans, AI agents, tools, and plugins, will be able to access website guidelines.

But the proposal is meeting resistance for a number of reasons. One of them is that the proposal presents the new feature as one that will be used by humans and AI, but the GitHub repository for the feature clearly positions it as purely for use by AI:

“The Guidelines CPT stores site-wide editorial rules — brand voice, copy standards, image guidelines. This is one type of instructional content a site needs, but not the only one.

As AI-powered tools integrate with WordPress, a recurring need is emerging for sites to store different kinds of persistent, structured knowledge that shapes how agents interact with the site. “

Usefulness and utility for humans are not mentioned once on that page. There is a gap between the public proposal’s description and the actual technical specification. This calls into question whether anybody in core truly knows who or what the new feature is for and how it will be used.

That is but one reason out of at least six that developers cite for why the proposal feels ill-advised and unnecessary.

Resistance To Proposal

The proposal was met with resistance from members of the WordPress developer community in the private Dynamic WordPress Facebook group (must join to read the discussion), with 29 comments that were overwhelmingly against the proposal to merge this feature into core.

There were six reasons why developers were against the proposal:

  1. This should be a plugin, not functionality in core.
  2. Core has enough in it; the functionality will just add bloat.
  3. There are bigger priorities, with native multilingual unanimously cited as the most important missing functionality.
  4. There were doubts about whether the proposal had been fully considered.
  5. Many suggested that this is not a user-facing function; it’s for AI.
  6. A few suggested that this functionality benefits Automattic’s enterprise users on WordPress.com more than the average WordPress user.

Resistance to the proposal to merge the function into core wasn’t limited to social media, the announcement on WordPress itself drew questions about the necessity of function in core.

Commenter mrwweb shared:

“I know it says this feature is provided for both “author-facing and agent-facing” applications, but it feels like AI/LLMs are driving the conception of the feature.

Further, the underlying assumption that “Most sites already have content standards” does not strike me as accurate. That is a very real need and use-case, but I’m not sure it’s one that would justify a new core feature on its own.

…I think there’s a lot of promise in this feature, but I also wonder if it needs a broader lens that considers a fuller-range of use-cases, especially for humans.”

Namith Jawahar commented:

“This looks like an unnecessary overreach. Better to let developers decide it for individual sites rather than force a post type onto everyone.”

Aaron Jorbin expressed the opinion that it sounds like a good feature but that it feels incomplete at the moment.

“As is, this feels incomplete. I think it does set the foundation and with the time remaining before 7.1, I think this could become a great addition.”

Second Time A New Feature Is Questioned

This marks the second time in WordPress version 7 that a new feature was strongly questioned. Version 7.0 saw developers question the necessity of Real-Time Collaboration (RTC), which was supposed to be a focus of Phase 3 collaboration.

Featured Image by Shutterstock/MNStudio

https://www.searchenginejournal.com/wordpress-new-ai-feature/580500/