What happens when more than 400 teams are given a month to build whatever they want? Automattic set out to find the answer with Radical Speed Month, a company-wide hackathon that ran from April 22 to May 21.
Participants were encouraged to pursue projects outside their day-to-day responsibilities and, working in pairs, teams had the autonomy to ship their ideas without seeking approval.
While this is far from a complete list, we’ve gathered some of the projects we came across during Radical Speed Month and, where possible, spoke with the people behind them.
A Look at the Projects
WP Desktop Mode
By: Daniel López, Roberto Aranda
WP Desktop Mode reshapes the /wp-admin experience into a desktop operating system. Admin pages open in floating, movable windows while navigation happens through a dock built from the existing menu. It even includes a recycle bin, widgets, and lets users set a wallpaper.
In the demo video on GitHub, López said, “I thought that probably WordPress has been the same way for 20 years, always showing the same kind of architecture in the visuals, let’s say. So I decided to completely change how you work with WordPress.”
It’s per-user opt-in, has a command palette powered by OpenAI, a wallpaper registry, desktop icons, session persistence, 25 components, and much more.
We got in touch with Daniel López Sánchez to learn more about the project and asked:
WP Desktop Mode changes the way people interact with wp-admin quite a bit. Was there a specific moment or frustration that made you think WordPress admin could work better as a desktop-style interface?
Daniel said:
“ There was no frustration for me at all. I just felt that using the same kind of interface for 20+ years may have worked in the 2000s, but not anymore. Today we handle tons of things at the same time: agents working here and there, posts, pages, updates, workflows, and much more. I realized that many of the things we do every day, even the dull ones, have made us internalize how “single-purpose” and restrictive the WordPress admin actually is. The fact that you can’t see real-time Gutenberg previews directly on the page, that you can’t simply drag and drop things naturally, or that so many interactions we take for granted in modern software still don’t exist in WordPress… we’ve accepted all of that as “normal” just because it’s WordPress. I wanted to break that mindset and offer a real working environment instead of just an administration panel. A place where working feels fun and fluid, not just a sequence of clicks in a predefined order. That’s where the idea of Desktop Mode was born: WordPress as an operating system.”
He went on to describe a longer-term vision for transforming WordPress into something more than a traditional CMS:
“ The idea is also to turn WordPress into your own personal cloud workspace: a place where your agents run, where your tools live, and where everything connects seamlessly across platforms. Multi-platform, multi-agent, multi-everything. I don’t want WordPress to be seen only as a tool for publishing websites or e-commerce stores anymore. I want it to become something bigger: your own independent cloud environment. A digital space you truly own, where your workflows, automation, AI agents, content, applications, and creativity coexist under your control instead of being scattered across dozens of closed services and platforms. A place where, why not, you can manage your entire smart home through integrations with Home Assistant. A place where your AI agents organize your work, monitor your servers, automate your business, edit content, generate designs, answer customers, or even coordinate with each other autonomously. A place where your files, chats, dashboards, APIs, automations, analytics, development environments, media libraries, and personal tools all live together in the same ecosystem. Not just a CMS anymore, but a true digital operating system for your life, your work, and your ideas.”
Nick Hamze released ODD (Outlandish Desktop Decorator), a companion system for WP Desktop Mode. It is an app store for WP Desktop Mode and lets users browse and install visual and functional upgrades like wallpapers, icon sets, cursor themes, apps, and widgets.
The plugin is now available in the repository as well.
FlavorPress
By: Matthias Reinholz, Lucas Radke
FlavorPress is aimed at online creators and helps them keep discovering stories to talk about. It pulls together information from different parts of the web and turns it into a personalized feed, while also suggesting new angles for discussing those topics on a personal blog.
To learn more about the project, we asked Lucas Radke:
What has been the most interesting or difficult part of building a system that can turn signals from different sources into story ideas that creators can actually use?
Lucas replied:
“The most difficult part, especially in times of AI, was to set scope and define the perfect persona. Now that code gets cheaper its harder to focus on doing one thing right.”
Studio Write
By: Jorge Costa, Andre Maneiro
Studio Write is a macOS app that focuses on bringing writing, research, and AI-assisted workflows into a single environment. The preview is now available.
Jorge on X said, “ I got tired of pasting paragraphs between my notes app, my editor, and ChatGPT, and watching the AI forget everything by morning.”
Clips
By: Sarosh Aga, Aagam Shah
Clips focuses on converting WordPress posts into short vertical video clips (9:16) that can be shared on social platforms.
It’s now available as an early preview feature for WordPress.com sites on Premium plans and above, with support also planned for Jetpack AI and Complete subscribers. The feature is built into the editor, and the initial release launches with a single “Cinematic” style focused on atmospheric, b-roll-driven visuals.
The generated video clip can be autoposted through Jetpack Social, embedded in a post, or even downloaded.
When asked about the project’s origins, Aga described:
“Every newsroom, marketer, store owner, personal blog publishes some form of textual literature. Their audience watches Youtube Shorts, Instagram Reels, and TikTok. The gap between the two currently requires a video team or a separate SaaS tool. I want to close that gap with the aim of meeting people where they are and organically bringing them to the full content. So you write your post, and when you’re ready to publish, a short-form video of your article is ready too – generated automatically using Al, ready to go out alongside your post to the platforms your audience use.”
Woo help desk / Merchant Buddy
By: Mike Jolley, Nadir Seghir
A help desk project for WooCommerce merchants focused on complex use cases. Nadir Seghir on X said, “ Following the trend, Mike Jolley and I are building a Woo help desk, catering to the complex use cases of Woo merchants, and of course, agentic For me, it’s a chance to play with new tech and explore the limits of agents and Woo code.”
A demo was provided by Mike Jolley, and as a part of this project, Nadir Seghir also created Kilim.
AI Assistant for Woo
By: Povilas Staskus
The project explores how AI agents could help WooCommerce merchants achieve more from their phones, focusing on providing useful insights and enabling actions within a mobile experience that feels integrated into the WooCommerce app.
Povilas Staskus also asked, “ If you run a store, what would you most want help doing from your phone? Let me know. I’d love to use that to shape the first iteration.”
WP Docs Health Monitor
By: JuanMa Garrido, Jonathan Bossenger
WP Docs Health Monitor automatically checks WordPress developer documentation against the actual source code and reports where they’ve drifted, flagging outdated APIs, missing details, broken examples, and deprecated usage along with suggested fixes.
The project focuses on the challenge of documentation drift, where frequent Gutenberg updates can leave developer references outdated and increasingly disconnected from the underlying code, “ The Block Editor Handbook has more than 200 pages of documentation that developers rely on every day. APIs change, parameters get renamed, code examples stop working — and the docs drift further from the code with every Gutenberg release. Some content is automatically generated from the code but other content is manually created and maintained. Nobody knows which pages are accurate and which are silently outdated.”
The proposed solution compares documentation against the source code itself, using AI to detect mismatches and highlight potentially outdated information, “ That’s the problem Jonathan Bossenger and I have been working on for the last few weeks. The tool we’re building, the Block Editor Docs Health Monitor, compares each handbook page against the actual Gutenberg and WordPress source code, asks an LLM to flag the mismatches, and publishes a static dashboard a doc author can open to see exactly what’s wrong, page by page, ranked by severity, with the line of code that proves the finding.”
JuanMa Garrido also did a YouTube live session where he explained the project in depth.
Woo Email Health
By: Job Thomas, Jonathan Bossenger
This is an email health system for WooCommerce that includes email activity logs, automated warnings for broken email flows, and checks to detect risky sender configurations that could prevent store emails from being delivered properly. The team has already brought part of the project into WooCommerce core, with transactional email logging set to ship in WooCommerce 10.9.
Job said the project grew out of a longstanding challenge with WooCommerce email delivery, which was recently reinforced by a personal shopping experience, “ Case in point, three weeks ago we ordered a fairly niche product: replacement parts of our kids’ CamelBak bottles….I was about to contact the payment provider to flag the site as fraudulent, but first gave the phone number on the site another go via WhatsApp. Finally, we got a response. It turns out that the merchant was having an issue with emails not being sent. Emails are such a key to the ecommerce system, but they are also such a complex thing to configure. I don’t expect the average merchant to know why so many emails end up in spam by default for example.”
We got in touch with Job to learn more and asked:
Since the project idea came from a real failed WooCommerce order experience, given how difficult it can be to figure out what happened to WooCommerce emails, what part of the troubleshooting process did you most want the project to make more visible?
Job replied:
I think the biggest challenge we have in support whenever we need to do email troubleshooting (which is over 1% of all our requests) is that there’s no active logging. So we’ll need to ask the merchant to install a mail logging app, then test the flow again, and only then get the data we need to figure out where the emails are interrupted.
What’s the biggest challenge you have faced with this project so far?
“I think the biggest is that Jon has never worked on Woo before while I’m not a developer. But I think it’s also been a strength as we approach this with different eyes. For me personally, an extra challenge is that I’m also leading a team of over 100 people and customer support of course doesn’t stop; balancing that has been tricky”
What’s been the biggest learning from this collaboration?
“I think the biggest learning for me has been around coding – I am grateful that I’m working with an engineer on this, but I’m also made aware that while I may not understand the code, a lot of the coding has to do with actually driving the process, and because of my deep understanding of Woo, I can work well with Jon and even pick up things the code says it should/would do but doesn’t. So I think in that sense, AI assisted coding is changing the coding relationship.”
Jonathan stated:
“The biggest learning for me, is that getting new features submitted into large open source projects like Woo takes time, so being patient is important.”
As a part of working on both projects, Jonathan also created Concilium, which is a locally-installed dashboard for running multiple CLI AI coding agents side-by-side.
Jetpack Podcast
By: Rob Pugh, Anthony Arcangelini
The project aims to make starting and managing a podcast more accessible within WordPress. As Rob said in the demo video, “Our goal is to make it as easy to start a podcast as it is to blog or newsletter.”
Rob Pugh also highlighted, “ Everyone is feeling the pressure of AI, and this is one of the coolest ways I’ve seen of finding out what is possible. I’ve never had an opportunity like this in my career, and I may never again.”
It has now been launched on WordPress.com, and features include distribution to major podcast apps, integrated newsletter sharing, and analytics.
Simplenote MCP Server
By: Mark Biek, Evan Tobiesen
Mark Biek initially built an MCP server for Simplenote a couple of months ago to let users query their notes through LLM tools like Claude. During Radical Speed Month, the project was extended further.
The updated version expands support from macOS to Windows and Linux. It also introduces new write functionality, including creating, updating, and deleting notes (with deletions going to the Simplenote Trash), along with options to restore notes, view version history, and revert notes to earlier states.
On the challenges behind the project, we asked Mark Biek:
What has been the most challenging part of expanding the Simplenote MCP server from a simple macOS-only experiment into something that supports more platforms and note editing?
Mark replied:
“As far as challenges go, we spent a lot of time focusing on data protection. We wanted to make sure that there were plenty of guardrails in place to prevent unwanted changes to notes. Most importantly, we made sure that write-mode for the MCP server is opt-in at setup time and can be enabled or disabled at any point. It helped a lot that Simperium (which is the open-source project which handles the data syncing for Simplenote) is designed with data integrity in mind. Generative AI tools are being used more and more by non-technical people. That said, the concept of MCP servers can still be a bit daunting for people without experience. While some command-line use is unavoidable, we still tried to ensure that the installation and configuration process was as seamless as possible.”
Theme for Short-Form Blogging on WordPress.com
By: Dave Martin, Joseph Scott
The theme focuses on short-form publishing, designed for quick posts, replies, and reblogs. The theme supports rapid posting through a simple compose interface, profile pages that organize posts and interactions, and reblogs that automatically credit the original author while bringing content into a user’s own feed.
WooCommerce Variations Experience Improvement
By: James Kemp, Poli Gilad
The project focuses on improving how users create and manage product variations in WooCommerce. It aims to simplify an existing multi-step workflow that currently involves navigating multiple tabs, page reloads, attribute handling, and batch generation of variations.
The updated approach brings the entire experience into a single variations tab, making creation and editing more streamlined.
Telegram Bot Integration for Studio
By: Gergely Csécsey, Rob Roy
The project explores connecting a Telegram bot with the local Studio app, enabling users to interact with the AI agent directly through Telegram.
Users can send instructions to the bot, which routes them to the AI agent and returns a response once the task is completed. The bot also shares a screenshot of the resulting output.
Gergely Csécsey has provided a demo video of the project in action.
Wapuu Studio
By: Antonio Sejas, Wojtek Naruniec
The project allows users to create custom Wapuus by entering a text prompt describing characteristics such as mood, outfit, theme, colors, or activities, which are then transformed into a personalized design.
The project also includes a gallery where users can browse and explore Wapuu creations generated by others.
Pressmind
By: Fatih Kadir Akın
An experimental WordPress plugin by Fatih Kadir Akın that turns natural language prompts into real Gutenberg blocks. It reads the post context, streams model output in the editor, and replaces the prompt block with generated content.
The plugin can produce static layouts, rich HTML content, SVG diagrams, organizational charts, tables, callouts, sandboxed interactive widgets, and AI-generated images stored in the Media Library.
A flow chart depicting how the plugin works was also provided.
The plugin uses a server-side security approach where API keys are stored in WordPress options and are not exposed to the client. Access to REST endpoints is restricted to users with permission to edit the target post, while generated block markup is parsed, filtered through an allowlist, and sanitized before being inserted.
Static HTML and SVG output are limited through a conservative allowlist, and scripted or style-based content is isolated within a pressmind/sandbox environment. Sandbox iframes run with allow-scripts enabled but without same-origin access, while AI-generated images are first imported into the WordPress Media Library before being added to content.
WP as an open canvas
By: Matias Ventura
The project explores what WordPress could look like as an operating system experienced through an open canvas. In this concept, the canvas contains content objects such as posts, pages, and media, arranged in ways that suit individual needs and preferences.
Widgets are treated as flexible elements with interfaces that are not fixed. Pages are represented as card-like elements.
The agents would be aware of the spatial layout, relationships, and structure of objects, and could act across them.
The canvas could also serve as a way to visually represent an entire site, including its sitemap and blog structure, where relationships between pages and posts, as well as slugs.
Objects can also be connected to form flows, and notes can reference linked materials, allowing agents to operate with contextual awareness.
Cortext
By: Héctor Prieto, Miguel Fonseca
It’s a plugin for building a knowledge base inside the site, offering nested pages, collections, blocks, and multiple views.
The project outlined a gap between what knowledge bases require and how WordPress currently handles that workflow, “ Knowledge bases need documents, typed records, views, and relations. WordPress has the storage pieces for that work, but the editing experience is scattered across custom fields, list tables, plugin screens, and theme templates.”
It also frames what WordPress already does well, and what it still lacks for this use case, “ WordPress is self-hosted, exportable, and stable. The block editor handles documents well. What is missing is a knowledge base interface that treats pages, collections, fields, and views as one product surface while keeping the data in WordPress.”
They also highlight that WordPress core already provides the necessary building blocks for this kind of system.” WordPress core now has enough of the pieces to make this practical: posts, post meta, REST, the block editor, and DataViews. Cortext wires those together into one knowledge base surface.”
The admin UI is a React shell that combines the WordPress block editor for documents with collection views built on WordPress packages.
WooCommerce for Claude
By: Gary Murray, Lourens
This is an experimental plugin that explores adding an intelligence layer on top of WooCommerce MCP support. The project introduces analytics-focused skills, structured store knowledge, and AI-readiness scoring to help AI clients provide more useful insights about store performance, catalog quality, and business trends, while using aggregated and pseudonymized data by default.
The project is designed to handle requests through a single MCP endpoint, avoiding separate background processes and only running when an AI request is made, “ Everything ships through one endpoint at /wp-json/woocommerce-claude/mcp, registered as WordPress Abilities and picked up by the WordPress MCP adapter that’s vendored inside Woo. No separate process. No cron. No background sync. The plugin only does work when an MCP request arrives.”
The project also emphasizes a privacy-first approach by limiting analytics responses to aggregated data rather than exposing customer information, “ The plugin sends aggregated data – counts, sums, averages, time series, distributions – and nothing else. Individual customer names, emails, and addresses are excluded from every analytics response by design.”
WordPress Studio meets Vibe Coders
By: Riad Benguella, Matías Ventura
The project explores using AI-assisted workflows to generate and shape WordPress sites through conversational prompts.
The preview shared by Riad shows him describing a farm-themed one-page website, with Studio creating the site structure and generating a live design in real time.
Opa
By: Derek Hanson, Marjorie R. Asturias
It’s a blogging platform focused on helping writers, bloggers, and creators, designed to help users go from idea to published content quickly.
Haydi
By: Cem Ünalan and Boro Sitnikovski
An AI autopilot that lets you use any AI provider through WordPress 7.0 Connectors to inspect and edit WordPress files directly from wp-admin, all within strict guardrails and without needing shell or SSH access.
Hooks Graph
By: Panagiotis Synetos and Chris Lilitsas
The tool scans WordPress source code to identify actions and filters, then visualizes their relationships in an interactive graph that can also be accessed by AI tools through MCP.
WooPayments CLI
By: Daniel Mallory
A terminal-based tool for accessing WooPayments store information, allowing users to inspect account status, transactions, deposits, disputes, and other payment data without using WP-Admin.
Given the scale of the initiative, there are undoubtedly many more experiments, prototypes, and ideas beyond those featured here, making this only a small glimpse into the initiative.