WordPress Development in Hyper-Speed: Server-Side Coding Bots
For the past month, I have been coding directly on my live WordPress sites. This has massively sped up my workflows, helped me contribute bug fixes to both WP-CLI and Gutenberg, and opened my eyes to what the future holds.
It started when OpenClaw went viral, and I decided to give it a shot. I took my experimental AI sandbox, Sarai Chinwag, moved it over to a Hetzner VPS, and fired up the bot.
This was one of my first exchanges with the Claw:
There are two WordPress concepts that make a server-side agent so effective:
- WP-CLI
- Abilities API (added in WordPress 6.9)
Both of these features work in tandem. All of a sudden, you have full visibility of your entire website, including the server and the database, plus a toolkit to customize it.
Things you once had to click through wp-admin, cPanel, or MySQL for can now be accessed through natural language.
At this point, I realized that I was playing with a serious weapon. I also saw for the first time that my plugin, Data Machine, an AI-powered automation engine I started building in April of 2025, was much more effective when the agent could use it directly via the WP-CLI.
From there, I began to iterate. I created some silly things while experimenting, learned a lot, and bumped into many sharp edges in the process.
Token Burn & Security Reality-Check
After two weeks using OpenClaw, I had endless ideas and appreciation for the creator, Peter Steinberger. I was also blasting through my usage limits with AI providers.
OpenClaw provides a lot of features, which are great if you want a personal assistant that can do everything. If you just want a coding bot, OpenClaw is more than what you need.
Not to mention, Data Machine already had a scheduling system via the Action Scheduler, providing more flexibility, control, and visibility than OpenClaw’s cron system.
I also learned a ton about VPS security, including how fast people will hack you. Somebody stole my Anthropic API key via my insecure VPS and racked up $200 worth of charges overnight.
Even with failures and setbacks, I knew that I had to install this on Extra Chill, my 15+ year old WordPress Multisite Network. But I couldn’t risk wrapping OpenClaw around the money site.
Leaving the Sandbox: Agent Memory
The missing pieces were memory and portability. OpenClaw’s power comes in its ability to learn over time, and be used from any chat app you want. I started thinking about how to solve this.
For memory, Data Machine was the obvious choice. It already had a directive system. Memory was the next evolution.
So, I converted the PHP-based directive system to an agent memory system, inspired by OpenClaw, with a WordPress twist. It provides:
- SOUL.md
- USER.md
- MEMORY.md
- Extensibility via custom memory files.
Your WordPress site can now learn over time.
Solving Portability
Since WordPress does not have persistent WebSocket or HTTP streaming support, using it as a real-time agent runtime is (currently) less than ideal, but Data Machine does have a built-in chat system.
However, if you want the power of a coding agent, you should use a coding agent, such as OpenCode:
The magic of WP-OpenCode is that it provides Data Machine memory files to the coding agent via opencode.json. So, you can view and edit them manually to customize your agent’s personality and behavior.
With this setup, you can choose between either Discord (Kimaki) or Telegram. I’ll admit I have not tried the Telegram setup, but the Discord one is excellent.
Eventually, I hope to solve even this from inside of WordPress, but for now, using it in this way is rapidly advancing my own development.
Data Machine has become agentic infrastructure for WordPress. It provides a toolkit to manage your website and create content using a personalized AI assistant.
What this Means for the Future
If you try this setup, it might change your views about where WordPress is going. For me, it means I only use wp-admin for Gutenberg, because as a content creator, I enjoy using the editor. Everything else has been abstracted into natural language, including the code.
Data Machine roadmap includes solving the portable chat problem, and integrating with the WP-AI-Client, coming to core in 7.0. After that, the plugin will reach 1.0 maturity and find its way onto the Plugin Repository.
In the not-so-distant future, I believe non-technical people will be able to build and manage their own custom WordPress sites from their cell phone. They won’t need to know what WordPress is to use it effectively.
I plan to contribute to this effort.