AI Services vs OpenStation

This WordPress plugin introduces central infrastructure which allows other plugins to make use of AI capabilities. It exposes APIs that can be used in various contexts, whether you need to use AI capabilities in server-side or client-side code. Furthermore, the APIs are agnostic of the AI service – whether that’s Anthropic, Google, or OpenAI, to only name a few, you can use any of them in the same way. You can also register your own implementation of another service, if it is not supported out of the box. The plugin does intentionally not come with specific AI driven features built-in, except for an AI Playground screen to explore AI capabilities as well as a settings screen to configure AI service credentials. The purpose of this plugin is to facilitate use of AI by other plugins. As such, it is a perfect use-case for plugin dependencies. Here’s a (non-comprehensive) feature list: Abstraction layer and APIs to communicate with any AI service in a uniform way APIs are available in both PHP and in JavaScript, as well as via the WordPress REST API and WP-CLI commands Currently supports the following AI capabilities (with more on the way!): text generation (including text streaming for more immediate feedback to users) text chats with history multimodal input function calling image generation AI Playground administration screen (in the Tools menu) allows exploring the different AI capabilities Explore all AI capabilities supported by the plugin via user interface Select which AI service and model to use and set a few advanced configuration parameters Define your own function declarations used for AI function calling Generate images and save them to the WordPress media library Exchange the AI service or model on the fly to continue a chat started with one model with another one AI Services settings screen to configure services with API credentials Built-in AI service implementations Anthropic (Claude) Google (Gemini, Imagen) Mistral OpenAI (GPT, Dall-E) Perplexity (Sonar) xAI (Grok) Browser (client-side only; experimental support for Chrome’s built-in AI APIs and Edge’s built-in AI APIs) Additional AI service integrations can be registered and will then be available in the same way as built-in ones Disclaimer: The AI Services plugin is still in its early stages, with a limited feature set and more being added. A crucial part of refining the plugin is shaping the APIs to make them easy to use and cover the different generative AI capabilities that the AI services offer in a uniform way. That’s why your feedback is much appreciated! Why? A centralized AI infrastructure facilitates user choice. Users may prefer certain AI services over other ones, and for many common tasks, either of the popular AI services is suitable. Having a common API regardless of the AI service allows leaving the choice to the user, rather than the plugin author. Since the centralized AI infrastructure comes with a common API that works the same for every AI service, it means plugin developers don’t have to spend as much time familiarizing themselves with different services, at least when it comes to simple tasks. For tasks where certain services may have advantages over others, there is still flexibility to focus on a specific AI service. It also means no more reinventing the wheel: Since most AI services do not provide PHP SDKs for their APIs, many times this means WordPress plugins that want to leverage AI have to implement their own layer around the service’s API. Not only is that time consuming, it also distracts from working on the actual (AI driven) features that the plugin should offer to its users. In fact this directly facilitates the user choice aspect mentioned, as having APIs for various AI services already provided means you can simply make those available to your plugin users. Having central AI infrastructure available unlocks AI capabilities for smaller plugins or features: It may not be worth the investment to implement a whole AI API layer for a simple AI driven feature, but when you already have it available, it can lead to more plugins (and thus more users) benefitting from AI capabilities. Last but not least, a central AI infrastructure means users will only have to configure the AI API once, e.g. paste their API keys only in a single WordPress administration screen. Without central AI infrastructure, every plugin has to provide its own UI for pasting API keys, making the process more tedious for site owners the more AI capabilities their site uses. Integration with third party services While the plugin APIs allow registering custom AI services, the plugin comes with a few popular AI services built-in. These AI services rely on the respective third party API. Their use is optional and it is up to you to choose which third party service you would like to use or whether you would like to use multiple. The use of the third party AI services is subject to the respective terms of service. The following third party services are supported out of the box: Anthropic (Claude) Anthropic Consumer Terms of Service Anthropic Commercial Terms of Service Anthropic Privacy Policy Google (Gemini, Imagen) Google Terms of Service Google AI Terms of Service Google Privacy Policy Mistral Mistral Terms of Service Mistral Privacy Policy OpenAI (GPT, Dall-E) OpenAI Terms of Use OpenAI Privacy Policy Perplexity (Sonar) Perplexity Terms of Service Perplexity Privacy Policy xAI (Grok) xAI Terms of Service – Consumer xAI Terms of Service – Enterprise xAI Privacy Policy Code examples for using the API Generate the answer to a prompt in PHP code: use Felix_Arntz\AI_Services\Services\API\Enums\AI_Capability; use Felix_Arntz\AI_Services\Services\API\Helpers; if ( ai_services()->has_available_services() ) { $service = ai_services()->get_available_service(); try { $candidates = $service ->get_model( array( 'feature' => 'my-test-feature', 'capabilities' => array( AI_Capability::TEXT_GENERATION ), ) ) ->generate_text( 'What can I do with WordPress?' ); $text = Helpers::get_text_from_contents( Helpers::get_candidate_contents( $candidates ) ); echo $text; } catch ( Exception $e ) { // Handle the exception. } } Generate the answer to a prompt in JavaScript code: const helpers = aiServices.ai.helpers; const { hasAvailableServices, getAvailableService } = wp.data.select( 'ai-services/ai' ); if ( hasAvailableServices() ) { const service = getAvailableService(); try { const candidates = await service.generateText( 'What can I do with WordPress?', { feature: 'my-test-feature' } ); const text = helpers.getTextFromContents( helpers.getCandidateContents( candidates ) ); console.log( text ); } catch ( error ) { // Handle the error. } } Generate the answer to a prompt using WP-CLI: wp ai-services generate-text "What can I do with WordPress?" --feature=my-test-feature You can also use a specific AI service, if you have a preference, for example the google service. Generate the answer to a prompt using a specific AI service, in PHP code: use Felix_Arntz\AI_Services\Services\API\Enums\AI_Capability; use Felix_Arntz\AI_Services\Services\API\Helpers; if ( ai_services()->is_service_available( 'google' ) ) { $service = ai_services()->get_available_service( 'google' ); try { $candidates = $service ->get_model( array( 'feature' => 'my-test-feature', 'capabilities' => array( AI_Capability::TEXT_GENERATION ), ) ) ->generate_text( 'What can I do with WordPress?' ); $text = Helpers::get_text_from_contents( Helpers::get_candidate_contents( $candidates ) ); echo $text; } catch ( Exception $e ) { // Handle the exception. } } Refer to the plugin documentation for granular examples including explainers. For complete examples such as entire plugins built on top of the AI Services infrastructure, please see the examples directory on GitHub.

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.