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WordPress agent skills: guidance an MCP agent loads when it needs it

Abilities say what an agent can call; skills say how to use them well on a particular plugin, builder or site. GoBuildWP's WordPress agent skills follow the Agent Skills format: eligible enabled skills can be offered as a short catalog of names and descriptions, and the agent is instructed to request relevant full bodies with skill-get, which keeps the first request small.

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AI clientyour-site.comVerify site policy

Save our blog formatting rules as a skill so every agent follows them.

  1. wppilot/skill-getRead

    Loads the built-in skill-creator for the format and what makes a description trigger reliably.

  2. wppilot/skill-writeConfirm first

    Saves blog-formatting with a description saying when to use it and a body of the rules, enable_agentic on.

  3. wppilot/skill-getRead

    In a later session, the agent sees blog-formatting in the catalog and loads it before drafting a post.

Proposed sequence from source declarations; not a recorded task or proof of client compatibility. Inspect saved state and browser or provider results separately.
Edition
Free
Abilities
4
Requires
WordPress 6.9+, PHP 8.0+

Abilities

The skill calls

AbilityWhat it does hereUndo and limits
skill-getLoads one skill by slug from any source: the full body, its metadata and, for bundled skills, the list of resource files and their directory.Read-only. The resource list is capped and flagged when truncated.
skill-writeCreates or updates a user skill. The title becomes the slug (lowercase, dash-separated) and on_conflict decides between failing, replacing and renaming.Marked destructive, and limited to user skills: a title taken by a built-in or Pro skill is refused. Bodies are capped at 1 MB.
skill-editChanges only the fields passed on an existing user skill.Built-in and Pro skills are read-only.
skill-deleteMoves a user skill to the trash, or deletes it at once with permanent: true.Marked destructive; the permanent form cannot be reversed.

Reference: /docs/reference/skills

Documented source abilities; live registration can be narrower. Edition and effect labels describe the source catalogue. The installed schema, dependency versions, licence, WordPress capability, safety profile and per-ability policy determine availability; labels alone do not prove confirmation or recovery.

Read example: wppilot/skill-get

Discover this ability and its live schema first. The input below illustrates a bounded read from the source declaration; replace the example ID or name with an object returned by your site. It is not a recorded execution result.

ParameterType and meaning
slug requiredstring. The slug of the skill to load.
{
  "slug": "replace-with-a-slug-from-the-skill-list"
}
Input and output schema from the plugin source

1 input field. Required: slug. Optional parameters can affect response size and object selection.

{
  "input": {
    "type": "object",
    "properties": {
      "slug": {
        "type": "string",
        "description": "The slug of the skill to load."
      }
    },
    "required": [
      "slug"
    ]
  },
  "output": {
    "type": "object",
    "properties": {
      "found": {
        "type": "boolean"
      },
      "slug": {
        "type": "string"
      },
      "name": {
        "type": "string"
      },
      "description": {
        "type": "string"
      },
      "content": {
        "type": "string"
      },
      "enable_prompt": {
        "type": "boolean"
      },
      "enable_agentic": {
        "type": "boolean"
      },
      "source": {
        "type": "string"
      }
    },
    "required": [
      "found"
    ]
  }
}

Source: wppilot/includes/skills/abilities/skill-get.php

A successful read should identify the requested object and expose the structure described by the output schema. Compare it with the native editor before proposing a change. Troubleshoot missing or refused operations.

Worked example

Writing a house-style skill once

Expected outcome to verify on the installed stack; this sequence has not been recorded as a runtime test.

Eligible enabled rules can appear in the catalog. Inspect discovery and skill-get logs for the actual client; receiving the text does not prove it was followed, and returned text goes to the client/provider. The owner can edit, disable or download the skill from the Skills screen in wp-admin.

Immediately reread the saved slug, guidance and enabled state after saving or enabling. Check for conflicting active guidance before completion.

  1. skill-get

    Loads the built-in skill-creator for the format and what makes a description trigger reliably.

  2. skill-write

    Saves blog-formatting with a description saying when to use it and a body of the rules, enable_agentic on.

  3. skill-get

    In a later session, the agent sees blog-formatting in the catalog and loads it before drafting a post.

Data model

Three sources, one catalog

Skills come from three places. The free plugin bundles a few built-in ones, such as editing Gutenberg content, checking what was built and a skill-creator for writing new skills. GoBuildWP Pro adds its integration skills (a Bricks page build, WooCommerce, ACF, Dynamic Shortcodes families and many more) as read-only entries. And site owners write their own, which are stored as wppilot_skill posts with their own capability.

Each skill is a SKILL.md body with frontmatter: name, description, enable_agentic and enable_prompt. Skills with a description and enable_agentic on are listed in the catalog added to the discovery instructions. With enable_prompt on, a skill is also registered as an MCP prompt, so clients that show prompts list it. Draft user skills never reach an agent.

Pro filters integration skills by plugin detection and supported version floors. That does not establish that every ability in a visible skill is enabled or healthy; inspect the live registry and policy. A bundled skill can include reference files, and skill-get supplies their directory for clients that can read them. The body guides which references to open; it does not enforce the client's choice.

Limits

What skills do not change

  • A skill is guidance. The abilities, the connected account's capabilities and the safety profile still decide what a call may do.
  • A skill without a description is never listed, because the description is how an agent decides to load it.
  • User skills are capped at 1 MB each; uploads in wp-admin accept Markdown files only.
  • Pro's bundled skills cannot be edited on the site; they change with a Pro release.

Other plugins

Skills beside memory and site instructions

  • Memory holds facts about this site and its people, offered to the agent in its discovery instructions without anyone asking; whether a client reads and follows them is up to that client. A skill is a procedure someone wrote on purpose. A rule that needs steps belongs in a skill, a preference in memory.
  • Other plugins can contribute skill sources through the wppilot_skill_lookup_sources filter, which is how Pro's catalog appears in the free plugin's Skills screen.

Descriptions that trigger, safe overwrites and what a skill should hold

Writing the one line that decides whether WordPress agent skills get loaded

WordPress agent skills on a GoBuildWP site are found through a single line each. The catalog added to the server's discovery instructions lists every eligible skill as its slug, a source label such as User, and its description, followed by an instruction to load a matching skill with skill-get before starting the work. The agent never sees the body until it decides to load it, so the description carries the whole burden of being picked.

A description that works names the task and the trigger words an owner actually types: "Use when writing or editing a blog post, product announcement or newsletter on this site; covers headings, image alt text, link style and the sign-off." A description that fails says what the skill is rather than when to use it, such as "Our brand guidelines". Keep the body for the procedure: steps, examples of good and bad output, and the abilities to use in order.

Replacing a skill without losing the version that worked

skill-write treats the title as the identity: it is turned into a lowercase, dash-separated slug, and on_conflict decides what happens when a user skill with that slug exists. fail, the default, refuses and suggests a free slug with a number on the end. rename saves under that suffixed slug and leaves the original alone. replace overwrites the existing body, description and flags.

Skill edits are not entries in GoBuildWP's change ledger, so rollback-change cannot restore one. The skill post type does keep up to ten WordPress revisions of the title, body and description, but there is no screen to browse them yet, and flags such as enable_agentic are not part of a revision. The practical safeguard is rename while drafting: write blog-formatting-2, try it in a session, and only then replace the original. Saving with status draft keeps a skill out of every agent's catalog until you publish it.

Who may write skills, and under which safety profile

Skills belong to the person running the site, not to every editor. The skill post type has its own capability, mapped to GoBuildWP's manage capability, so only a user who can manage options (a super admin on multisite) can create, edit or delete them, in wp-admin or through an agent. skill-get is a read and works on Read Only. skill-write and skill-delete are classed destructive, so on Production Safe each call is held until it carries confirm; skill-edit is an ordinary write. A trashed skill can be restored from the Skills screen, while permanent true cannot be undone.

Rules that belong in a skill, and rules that do not

A skill is advice the agent reads, so it suits procedures and taste: the order to build a landing page in, which block patterns to reuse, how product descriptions are structured, what to check before publishing. It is the wrong place for a hard limit. "Never delete orders" written into a skill is a request the model may weigh against other instructions; the same limit set as the Read Only profile, an Abilities Hub rule or a token's profile ceiling is enforced before the call runs. See how GoBuildWP enforces limits.

Bodies are capped at 1 MB, but a skill that long costs context every time it loads. Several short skills with precise descriptions are loaded more reliably than one long manual. The skills reference has the full parameters, and agent memory is the place for facts rather than procedures.

  • "List the skills in your catalog and tell me which one you would load to write a case study."
  • "Save these product description rules as a draft skill called product-copy, then show me the stored description."
  • "Our blog-formatting skill needs a new rule about headings. Save it as a renamed copy first so I can test it."

Questions

GoBuildWP Skills questions

What are WordPress MCP agent skills?

Instruction files in the SKILL.md format that tell an AI agent how to carry out a kind of task on this site. The server lists them by name and description, and the agent loads the full text only when it needs it.

Do agent skills cost context on every request?

Only the catalog lines do. A skill's full body is loaded with skill-get when a task calls for it.

Can I write my own skills without code?

Yes. Write them in the Skills screen in wp-admin, upload Markdown files, or ask the agent to create one with skill-write.

Why doesn't a Pro integration skill appear in my catalog?

Its plugin is not active on this site, or is older than GoBuildWP supports, so the skill is hidden along with that plugin's abilities.

Where these facts come from

GoBuildWP behaviour is taken from the plugin source and the ability reference, checked by the GoBuildWP team.

Try it on GoBuildWP Skills in Read Only first

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