OpenStation vs Forerunner® AI Live Chat

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.

Forerunner AI Live Chat provides a complete, modern chat solution for WordPress websites using n8n or another automation platform. Connect your visitors with AI-powered conversations through webhook integration while maintaining full control over your data and user experience. Key Features AI-Powered Chat – Connect to any AI service via webhook Azure Functions Ready – Full support for Azure Functions with API Key authentication Custom API Headers – Add custom authentication headers (X-API-Key, Bearer tokens, etc.) Flexible Field Mapping – Configure request/response field names for any API format Custom Bot Icons – Choose from built-in icons or upload your own Mobile-Friendly Design – Responsive interface works on all devices Easy Setup – Simple configuration with no coding required Color Customization – Match your brand colors perfectly Webhook Integration – Connect to any external AI service (n8n, Azure, AWS, custom APIs) Configurable Timeout – Set custom timeout for slow AI agents (5-120 seconds) Voice Chat Ready – Compatible with voice chat extensions How It Works Install and activate the plugin Configure your webhook URL in the settings (from n8n or any other webhook-capable service) Customize the appearance, bot name, and messages to match your brand Visitors can start chatting with your AI assistant immediately Webhook Integration This plugin sends chat messages to your specified webhook URL, allowing seamless integration with n8n (our recommended starting point) or any other webhook-capable service. Common use cases include: Azure Functions – Full support with X-API-Key authentication n8n, Zapier, Make (Integromat), or Pipedream workflows OpenAI GPT models and Azure OpenAI Service AWS Lambda with API Gateway Google Cloud Functions Custom AI services and REST APIs Customer support systems CRM integrations Azure Functions Setup For Azure Functions integration: Enter your Azure Function URL in the Webhook Endpoint field Set Authentication Type to “API Key Header” Set Header Name to “X-API-Key” (or your function’s key name) Enter your Azure Function key as the Header Value Configure the Request/Response field names to match your function’s format The plugin connects exclusively to your specified webhook URL to process chat messages. No data is sent to third-party servers without your explicit configuration. Support For support questions, please use the WordPress.org support forums. We monitor these regularly and provide assistance with setup, configuration, and troubleshooting. Privacy This plugin sends chat messages exclusively to your specified webhook URL (for example, n8n, Zapier, Make, Pipedream, or a custom service). No conversation data is stored on your website unless your webhook implementation chooses to do so. The plugin does not collect personal information beyond what visitors voluntarily enter in the chat interface. Third-Party Services This plugin may use the following external services: IP Geolocation Service (ip-api.com) – Purpose: Display visitor location information (country and city) in the admin dashboard – Data sent: Visitor IP addresses only – When: Automatically when visitors access your website with the chat widget active – Terms of Service: http://ip-api.com/docs/legal – Privacy Policy: http://ip-api.com/docs/privacy – Note: This geolocation feature helps website administrators understand their visitor demographics but does not affect the chat functionality. No personal information beyond IP addresses is transmitted to this service. OpenAI Realtime API (api.openai.com) – Purpose: Voice chat functionality for real-time audio conversations – Data sent: Audio streams and voice data during voice chat sessions – When: Only when voice chat is enabled and actively used (requires separate DFO Voice plugin) – Terms of Service: https://openai.com/terms/ – Privacy Policy: https://openai.com/privacy/ – Note: This service is only used when the DFO Voice Realtime plugin is installed and voice chat is enabled. The free version of this plugin has voice features disabled by default. DFO Voice Plugin API (local WordPress REST API) – Purpose: Generate secure tokens for voice chat sessions – Data sent: Session requests and authentication data – When: Only when DFO Voice Realtime plugin is active and voice chat is initiated – Note: This is a local WordPress REST API endpoint, not an external service. No data is sent outside your website. Credits Developed by Design for Online®. Built with WordPress best practices and community feedback in mind.