On May 20, 2026, WordPress 7.0 “Armstrong” landed in the world, named in honor of legendary jazz trumpeter Louis Armstrong. But beyond the musical homage, this release marks the start of a new era: AI integration as a first-class citizen of the WordPress core.
And for those of us who’ve been working on Enable Abilities for MCP for months, this isn’t just good news: it’s validation of the bet. The Abilities API, which was a nascent feature in WordPress 6.9, is now the heart of the new AI model in core.
What’s big in WordPress 7.0 “Armstrong”
Quoting Matias Ventura, release lead for this version: “WordPress 7.0 marks the start of a new era, laying the foundation for AI across the WordPress experience.” The release squad describes the change as the foundation for AI across the entire WordPress experience. These are the pillars:
🤖 AI Client in core
For the first time, WordPress ships a native AI Client in core, capable of communicating with generative models. It’s not an optional plugin or an experiment: it’s part of the system. The AI Client works in tandem with the Abilities API, forming what the team describes as a “fiery duo” that enables workflow automation and new creative tools.
🔌 Centralized Connectors Hub
A new dashboard screen where you manage all external AI connections. It comes with 3 ready-to-use presets and lets you add custom connections with authentication in just a few clicks. This is exactly the kind of UX I was hoping for in WordPress generative AI a year ago.
⚡ Client-Side Abilities package
A JavaScript counterpart of the Abilities API, shipped with built-in UI and a command palette (⌘K / Ctrl+K). This turns every registered ability into an action invocable from anywhere in the dashboard.
🎨 Revamped dashboard
A modern color scheme, smooth transitions between screens, centralized font management, and a visual revisions viewer that lets you “scrub” between versions to see what changed at a glance.
🧱 New blocks and design tools
The new blocks Gallery (lightbox slideshow), Heading, Breadcrumbs, and Icons arrived. Plus granular responsive controls per block, editable menu overlays with blocks and patterns, and custom CSS at the block level inside the editor.
The release brings together over 420 enhancements and fixes contributed by 900+ contributors worldwide, including 279 first-timers.
Why this matters for Enable Abilities for MCP
Here’s where it gets interesting for us. The Abilities API we were using in WordPress 6.9 was a starting point; in 7.0 it becomes the backbone of the core’s AI model. This means three concrete things:
1. Immediate compatibility without touching code
Enable Abilities for MCP is already 100% compatible with WordPress 7.0 “Armstrong”. The 53 abilities organized in 11 categories we shipped in the latest plugin version keep working exactly the same. Why? Because from day one we built on the native Abilities API, not on a proprietary wrapper. When the API becomes the standard, the plugin gains without changing a single line.
2. The new AI Client can consume our abilities
With the AI Client in core, any AI model you connect from the Connectors Hub can automatically discover and execute the abilities the plugin registers. This includes:
- Querying and editing posts, pages, and CPTs
- Managing Rank Math, Yoast, and SEOPress
- WooCommerce operations (products, orders, customers) with HPOS
- The Events Calendar events
- And the multilingual block I’ll mention below
3. The command palette now exposes our abilities
Thanks to the Client-Side Abilities package, actions registered by the plugin can appear in the command palette (⌘K). Imagine being able to “search and replace in post 42” or “assign English language to post X” by typing two letters from any screen in the dashboard.
🌐 The plugin’s multilingual news (debuting with Armstrong)
Coinciding almost exactly with the 7.0 launch, in Enable Abilities for MCP we just shipped three specific abilities for multilingual management:
ewpa/set-post-language— Assigns a language to an existing post via Polylang or WPML. Automatically detects which translation plugin you have active.ewpa/link-post-translation— Links two posts as mutual translations. Polylang/WPML will recognize them as versions of the same content in different languages.ewpa/get-post-translations— Returns the full translation map of a post: language codes, post IDs, titles, and permalink for each available version.
Alongside these three, the version also ships ewpa/get-active-plugins: a utility that returns all active plugins on the site with their detected capabilities (multilanguage, SEO, WooCommerce, etc.). It lets the AI map the environment before any advanced operation — know if Polylang is active before assigning a language, or if WooCommerce is installed before querying products.
Additionally, the ewpa/create-post ability now accepts two new parameters:
language— language code for the post (en,es,fr, etc.)translation_of— ID of the original post it’s linked to as a translation
This means you can create a bilingual post in a single MCP call, already linked to its original version. In fact, I created this very post from Claude using that function. Before, you needed three calls (create post, set language, link translation); now just one.
The technical detail that matters
The multilingual abilities don’t assume a specific plugin: they detect if Polylang or WPML are active and delegate to the corresponding API. If you have one, it works; if not, they return an informative message without breaking anything.
Looking ahead
With WordPress 7.0 “Armstrong” as a foundation, the plugin has a fairly clear path:
- Leverage the native AI Client — when the core already manages connections, we can focus on exposing richer abilities instead of authentication plumbing
- Register our abilities in the command palette via the Client-Side Abilities package
- AI activity logs — what users in production have asked for the most
To close
What I like most about the 7.0 “Armstrong” launch is that it validates a design decision we made in March: to build on the native Abilities API, not on a custom wrapper. When that API becomes the core standard, the entire ecosystem we built wins.
WordPress 7.0 opens the door to an ecosystem where AI is not an add-on: it’s part of the system. And Enable Abilities for MCP is ready to ride that wave from day one.
👉 Download WordPress 7.0 “Armstrong”
👉 Install or update Enable Abilities for MCP
📖 Read the official WordPress 7.0 announcement
Have you updated to Armstrong yet? What ability would you like to see first in the core AI Client? Let me know in the comments or on LinkedIn.