I Built a Plugin with AI – Now I know what it Can’t do
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Hey friends,
This week’s blog post started out as a write-up about building a WordPress plugin with AI.
But by the end of the build, I realized that wasn’t really the story.
Yes, I used Cursor and OpenAI to scaffold and iterate. But what made the plugin work—what made it shippable—was everything outside the AI: the hooks I added for extensibility, the analytics integrations for real-world use, and the UX choices that only experience can teach you.
So the article I published this week is actually called “Build a WordPress Plugin with AI: Why It Takes More Than Cursor”.
Then hit reply—tell me how you’re experimenting with AI in your product or support work
This theme of tools vs. judgment made for a great conversation with Matt Batchelder in last week’s episode of WP Product Talk. He shared how he built a full suite of internal tools to make customer support and product work faster and smarter—not just using off-the-shelf stuff, but deeply integrated with their business logic.
As a teaser, I’ll drop this one visual from Batchelder. It’s one of the multiple slides he shared with us on the show to talk about the wide array of internal tools we use at Stellar to get our jobs done on the daily.
It’s a must-listen if you’re serious about growing a product business with better ops.
I also sat down recently with Remkus DeVries for his podcast—conversation dropping soon.
We covered a lot, but one topic kept surfacing: AI gives us power—but not wisdom.
We talked about the risks of blindly trusting AI-generated code, the performance pitfalls of overusing snippet plugins (guilty), and the dangerous gap between what AI can do and what it should do.
“Just because it works doesn’t mean it’s safe—or smart,” Remkus said.
“AI won’t save you from shipping a bad product. That’s still on you.”
We also talked about my upcoming WordCamp US talk with Katie Keith, where we’ll be sharing a masterclass on building WordPress products. It’s based on insights from over 100 WP Product Talk guests—what they’ve tried, what’s worked, and what they’d never do again.
🎤 I’d love to see you there
That’s the thread running through all of this:
AI can help—but only if you show up with the vision, the questions, and the care.
If you’ve been playing with AI in your support team or dev process, I’d love to hear how it’s going. What’s worked? What’s broken? What are you stuck on?
Just hit reply. I answer every reply I get in my inbox.
~ Matt
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