AI Block Editor – Gutenberg Block Generator & AI Assistant vs OpenStation

AI Block Editor adds a Gutenberg blocks assistant inside the WordPress editor. Describe what you want to add or change, and AI Editor will place, arrange, and update WordPress blocks directly in the editor. Use it for complex block layouts or simple edits. It supports the latest OpenAI models and lets you use your own API key. When your theme uses theme.json, AI Editor can follow your global styles, presets, and design tokens like colors, typography, spacing, and layout so generated blocks match your site’s design system. Major updates released in May 2026: theme.json style matching, selected block editing, and newer AI models with reasoning controls. Features Natural language block creation: Describe your desired content in plain language and the AI will handle the rest. Core Gutenberg blocks: AI Editor can use core Gutenberg blocks to create complete page sections and complex layouts, not just add single blocks one at a time. Selected block editing: Select one or more blocks in Gutenberg and ask AI Editor to update the selected content or layout. Custom block editing: Custom and third-party blocks can be edited after you add and select them. AI Editor uses the markup it can see for the selected block, so review the result because custom blocks may have private fields, dynamic rendering, or plugin-specific rules the AI cannot fully infer. Existing content lookup (WordPress 6.9+): AI Editor can look up existing WordPress posts, pages, and public custom post types for context, then use that text while helping you create or edit content. Theme-aware output: For themes that use theme.json, AI Editor can use your theme’s presets and editor settings to keep generated layouts consistent with your site’s colors, spacing, typography, and other design styles. Abilities API support: On WordPress 6.9+, connect custom WordPress Abilities API features to AI Editor so it can use site-specific data or actions while helping in the editor. Resizable sidebar: Drag the left edge of the AI Editor sidebar to make the chat panel wider. GPT model selection: Choose from the GPT models supported by AI Editor and available to your OpenAI account. Reasoning effort controls: Choose how much reasoning the model should use for faster simple edits or more careful complex layout work. Conversation context controls: Limit how many recent chat messages are sent with each request. Prompt caching: AI Editor keeps repeated system instructions stable so OpenAI prompt caching can reuse shared context when available, helping monitor API usage and reduce repeated input processing. Theme compatibility check: Review whether the active theme is a good fit for AI Editor’s Gutenberg and theme style workflow. BYOK: Use your own OpenAI API key. Language translation: Multilingual support. Prompt Examples “Add this article as a magazine-style layout using blocks: (paste article here).” “Create a layout for an About Us page, including sections for a mission statement, team members, and contact.” “Add 3 columns, each with a pricing plan.” “Create a table comparing the caffeine content of popular drinks.” “Rewrite this testimonial block to sound more concise.” “Update the selected columns for better balance.” Getting The Best Results Quickly add content blocks: Ask AI Editor to add headings, sections, buttons, lists, tables, columns, and other core blocks for your content. Turn full copy into blocks: Paste a full page draft or section copy and let AI Editor structure it into blocks. Use existing site content: Ask AI Editor to work from existing posts, pages, or custom post types when the request needs site context. With lower models or no reasoning, be explicit, such as “use the current page content as context” or “find posts about pricing and add a summary section.” Choose settings for the task: Select an available model and adjust reasoning effort based on the complexity of the requested layout or edit. Select the right amount of content: If the change depends on a parent layout, columns, group spacing, or surrounding section structure, select the whole relevant block or section and say what you want changed. Use narrow selections for simple edits: If you only need a specific text, button, heading, or single block changed, select just that block and give a direct instruction. Settings Navigate to Settings -> AI Editor to configure the plugin. OpenAI API Key: Add your own OpenAI API key. Requests are sent from your WordPress site to OpenAI. GPT Model: Choose the model AI Editor should use. Reasoning Effort: Choose none, low, medium, or high. Lower values are faster for simple edits; higher values can help with larger layouts or more careful restructuring but may take longer and use more tokens. Theme Style Context For AI: A short style note used as design direction. AI Editor can rewrite the active theme description with AI. Raw theme presets are handled separately, so this field should stay short and human-readable. Limit Conversation Context Sent To OpenAI: Turn on/off trimming of older chat messages before sending a new request. Max Messages In Conversation Context: Set how many recent messages are kept when conversation context trimming is enabled. The default is 50. Theme Compatibility For AI Editor: Run a compatibility check for the active theme. It reviews Gutenberg support, block theme signals, editor style support, and available theme presets so you can spot where manual cleanup may be needed. Note: AI Editor is powered by OpenAI’s GPT technology. For more information on the data handling and privacy aspects, please refer to OpenAI’s Privacy Policy and Terms of Service. Connect Custom Abilities On WordPress 6.9+, developers can connect custom abilities registered with the WordPress Abilities API to AI Editor. If your plugin or theme registers a custom ability, add an AI Editor config to the ability meta. Example: 'meta' => array( 'ai_editor' => array( 'action_name' => 'get_product_details', 'description' => 'Use this when the user asks for current product details from WooCommerce.', ), ) AI Editor will only use abilities that explicitly opt in. Keep ability results focused and avoid returning large private datasets or unrelated site data. Requirements PHP 7.0+ is recommended, WordPress 5.8+, with Gutenberg active. An OpenAI API key is required.

wp-admin forgets. OpenStation doesn’t. You know the moment. You’re deep in a post and you need one image from the Media Library. You click over, find it, click back, and everything you had going is gone. Your scroll position, your half-typed thought, the three other things you had queued up in your head. That’s not a bug you hit. That’s the design. wp-admin shows you one screen at a time, and every navigation throws the last one away. It has worked this way since 2003, like a fridge that empties itself every time you close the door. WordPress has rebuilt almost everything else. The editor, the site editor, the patterns, the styles. The admin’s one-screen-at-a-time model is the layer nobody touched. OpenStation touches it. Install it and admin screens become draggable, resizable windows. Edit a post while the Media Library sits open next to it. Drag an image from one window straight into the other. Keep comments open in the corner. Reload the browser and your window layout — open pages, positions, sizes, and window states — comes back where you left it. OpenStation itself is free, GPL, and opt-in per user. One click in the admin bar turns it on for you. One click turns it off. Nobody else on your site sees anything change, and deactivating the plugin restores the classic admin exactly. No Core patches and no lock-in. Optional AI providers may charge for their service. Built and maintained by Automattic, the company behind WordPress.com, Jetpack, WooCommerce, and Tumblr. Work on more than one thing at once Admin pages open as windows, including pages added by most other plugins. Drag them, resize them, snap them, tile them, minimize them to a taskbar. The admin menu becomes a dock of icons. Two editors open at once is one click away. Never lose your place Moving between open windows leaves each page in place. Across reloads, OpenStation remembers your open pages, window positions, sizes and states, virtual desktops, and focus. Closing a window with unsaved changes warns you first. A desk you can actually put things on Drop posts, media, and links right onto the wallpaper. Sort them into folders. Trash them to a Trash that actually holds things. The stuff you’re working on this week can just sit out where you can see it. One desktop per job Virtual desktops, the way your operating system does them. One for writing. One for the store. One for comment triage. One for that redesign you keep poking at. Switch between them without closing anything. Find anything with Cmd+K The full WordPress command palette, plus slash commands from your plugins, all under one keystroke. Turn on the optional AI assistant and you can ask it things like “which post had the comment asking for the recipe?” and it searches your own content to answer. (Requires an AI provider configured in Settings → Connectors on WordPress 7.0+. Details under “External services” below.) See how your site fits together The Corkboard is an interactive, zoomable map of how your posts, pages, and products link to each other. Pan around it. Find the orphans. Find the hubs. Running a store? Orders, Products, Coupons, and Customers become browsable folders with stock and sale ribbons. Open a customer to see their lifetime spend and what they buy most. Follow a product to its buyers, or a coupon to who redeemed it. Make it yours Wallpapers, from color presets to animated scenes to your own photo. Live widgets pinned to the desktop: drafts, stats, recent comments, a focus timer. Uploadable desktop themes, including a built-in Legacy theme that brings the old WordPress blue back in one click. And Mio, a soft-body desk companion that drifts across your wallpaper and gets bumped around by your windows. Off by default. You’ll turn it on. For developers Extend OpenStation through documented PHP and JavaScript APIs. Register windows, icons, wallpapers, widgets, commands, and settings tabs through stable openstation_register_* PHP APIs and a typed JavaScript API; customize dock items through documented hooks; add AI tools with the WordPress Abilities API. Copy-paste examples live in the developer docs on GitHub. External services No external service is required for OpenStation’s desktop interface. The optional AI Assistant and two user-initiated enrichment features make the external requests described below. AI Assistant The optional AI Assistant sends data to the AI provider you configure in WordPress’s Settings → Connectors (for example OpenAI, Anthropic, or Google). Generation is routed through WordPress 7.0’s built-in AI Client, which supplies the credentials stored in Connectors. The plugin never handles an API key itself. With no provider configured in Connectors, no external AI requests are made. When the AI Assistant is enabled and a user invokes it (via Cmd+K or the slash-command palette): What is sent: the user’s prompt, the conversation history for the active session, and tool-call metadata. The plugin’s built-in tools (search_posts, search_pages, search_comments) run WordPress’s native keyword search and may include excerpts of the matching posts/pages/comments in tool results, which are then sent back to the provider as part of the agentic loop. When it is sent: on user-initiated AI requests, and (if an administrator enables “Score new comments with AI”) on comment-save hooks for spam analysis. Posts, pages, and taxonomy terms are not sent automatically. Why it is sent: to obtain model completions and tool-call decisions that drive the AI Assistant. Who provides the service: whichever provider you configured in Settings → Connectors. Which provider (and endpoint) receives the data depends entirely on that configuration. Review the chosen provider’s own terms and privacy policy (e.g. OpenAI, Anthropic, or Google). URL shortcut favicons When an authorized user creates a desktop shortcut to an external URL, OpenStation asks that URL for its page HTML and favicon so the shortcut can display the site’s icon. The request is made from your WordPress server and sends the requested URL, the server’s IP address, an OpenStation user-agent string, and normal HTTP request metadata to the operator of that site. This happens only when a user creates the shortcut. The destination site’s terms and privacy policy apply. WordPress.org plugin information When an authorized user opens or refreshes parts of OpenStation’s Plugins window, OpenStation may request public plugin details, update metadata, and review excerpts from WordPress.org. These requests send plugin slugs, the site’s locale, and normal HTTP request metadata to WordPress.org. This information is used only to display and manage plugins. Review the WordPress.org Privacy Policy. OpenStation’s OAuth relay does not contact a service by itself. Third-party plugins that configure the relay may contact their own providers and are responsible for disclosing those services. Credits OpenStation is brought to you by Automattic. The plugin is open source under GPLv2-or-later; contributions are welcome on GitHub. Third-party libraries The plugin bundles the following third-party JavaScript library, loaded on demand only when a feature that needs it is in use: PixiJS (MIT License) — used by the Corkboard window, built-in canvas wallpapers (e.g. the animated WordPress logo), the Mio desk companion, and the Inkfall typing game. PixiJS is loaded from the plugin’s own assets/vendor/ directory; no CDN requests are made. Data files The Inkfall game’s word list (assets/games/inkfall/words.txt) is generated from the following sources (attribution also ships in the file’s header): FrequencyWords by Hermit Dave (CC-BY-SA 4.0) — English word-frequency ranking derived from the OpenSubtitles corpus. english-words by dwyl (Unlicense) — used as a validity filter. LDNOOBW English list (CC-BY 4.0) — used as an exclusion filter.