AI tools are now part of how many people write code, tests, and documentation. To help contributors use them responsibly, we’ve published a first version of AI Guidelines in the Make WordPress Core Core is the set of software required to run WordPress. The Core Development Team builds WordPress. AI handbook.
These guidelines are intended to be practical and lightweight: they don’t ban AI tooling, but they do set clear expectations for quality, licensing, and transparency.
What’s in the guidelines
At a high level, the guide focuses on five core principles:
- You are responsible for your contributions (AI can assist, but it isn’t a contributor).
- Disclose meaningful AI assistance in your PR description and/or Trac Trac is the place where contributors create issues for bugs or feature requests much like GitHub.https://core.trac.wordpress.org/. ticket comment.
- License compatibility matters: contributions must remain compatible with GPLv2-or-later, including AI-assisted output.
- Non-code assets count too (docs, screenshots, images, educational materials).
- Quality over volume: avoid low-signal, unverified “AI slop”; reviewers may close or reject work that doesn’t meet the bar.
The document also includes specific guidance for AI-assisted code, tests/QA, documentation, issues/support, and reviewer expectations, plus a short FAQ (including common tools like GitHub GitHub is a website that offers online implementation of git repositories that can easily be shared, copied and modified by other developers. Public repositories are free to host, private repositories require a paid subscription. GitHub introduced the concept of the ‘pull request’ where code changes done in branches by contributors can be reviewed and discussed before being merged be the repository owner. https://github.com/ Copilot, Claude Code, OpenAI Codex, and ChatGPT).
Read it and share feedback
Please read the handbook page and leave feedback – especially from maintainers and frequent reviewers who are already handling AI-assisted contributions at scale.
We’re tracking follow-ups and next steps in the GitHub core-program issue here.
What happens next
- We’ll x-post this to core meetings and request feedback/iteration.
- We’ll work toward a more prominent “policy” landing page (not just a handbook entry), similar to how other projects have approached responsible AI guidance.
As with much in AI, this is a fast-moving space. These guidelines are intended to be living documentation, updated and iterated on as the project gains experience and as the broader landscape evolves. If you have questions, concerns, or proposals for changes, please start a discussion in the #core-ai WordPress Slack Slack is a Collaborative Group Chat Platform https://slack.com/. The WordPress community has its own Slack Channel at https://make.wordpress.org/chat/. channel.
Resource: AI Guidelines (handbook)
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