The WordPress admin makes people learn its menu structure before they can find what they need.

We’re still clicking through menus designed in 2004. Posts. Pages. Appearance. Plugins. Settings. A taxonomy of system objects when what we actually have are human intentions: I want to write something. I want my site to look better. I want more traffic. I want to fix that thing that’s bugging me.

The gap between what we mean and what we click is where WordPress loses people.

The Problem

Every WordPress navigation interaction is a translation exercise.

User thinks: “I want to add a signup form to my homepage.”

WordPress requires: Pages → Home → Edit → Click plus icon → Search “form” → See 3 core options (none are signup forms) → Close inserter → Realize you need a plugin → Open new tab → Plugins → Add New → Search “form” → Choose from 47 options (which one? reviews are fake, screenshots are outdated, half are freemium upsell machines) → Activate → Return to editor tab → Refresh (because the new blocks won’t appear otherwise) → Click plus icon → Search again → Find new form block → Insert → Discover it requires “setup wizard” → Click through 4 onboarding screens → Finally build form → Style it to match your theme (it doesn’t) → Update → Preview → Realize the padding is wrong → Back to editor → Can’t find spacing controls → Google “wordpress form block spacing” → Learn you need to wrap it in a Group block → Delete form → Add Group → Add form inside Group → Adjust padding → Update.

Seventeen minutes to do what the user described in one sentence.

That’s too much to ask for a simple task.

The block editor solved “what blocks exist.” It didn’t solve “what do I actually need, where do I get it, and how do I make it not look like garbage on my site.”

And the complexity keeps compounding. Every plugin adds menu items, settings pages, onboarding wizards. A production WordPress site has 30+ top-level navigation entries. It’s not a menu anymore, it’s a junk drawer. Meanwhile, users are learning that they can just ask computers what they want. They’re using ChatGPT, Claude, voice assistants. They’re typing intentions and getting results.

Then they open WordPress and we hand them a filing cabinet.

The Vision

Describe what you want to do.

Not a chatbot bolted onto the sidebar. Not “AI-powered search.” A fundamental reconception of how humans navigate software.

The Intent Layer is a unified surface that accepts what you actually mean (typed, spoken, or hinted through context) and translates it into action. It understands WordPress deeply: the post you’re working on, the plugin that handles products, the fact that “make it look better” means something different for a photographer than a law firm. It knows what you just did and what you probably want to do next.

“Add a signup form to my homepage” → Shows preview of a form block styled to your theme, positioned on your homepage, connected to your existing email service if you have one, with a single “Add this” confirmation.

Find the action and choose it.

It’s fast. The design would use fast local matching for common requests, local models to interpret others and cloud AI for more complex questions. The target is under 50 milliseconds for the common cases.

It’s humble. If it isn’t sure, it should ask. Before making a change, it should show the user what will happen. I also want undo support for settings, deletions and rearrangements.

It should be easy to learn. New users see suggested actions based on context. The system reveals capabilities as they become relevant. Power users get keyboard shortcuts and terse responses, automatically, detected by how they interact, not a mode they toggle.

It coexists with everything. The old menu bar stays for those who want it, gracefully fading as the intent layer proves itself. The block editor gains a voice, literally. You can speak “add a heading here” while your hands stay on the keyboard. Plugins register capabilities, not menu items, and the intent layer routes “add a product” to WooCommerce without WooCommerce needing its own nav entry.

What We Build

The Intent Bar: An input at the top of the screen for typed or spoken requests. It would suggest actions as you type, use local interpretation where possible and ask cloud AI for help with complex requests. When you’re not typing, it would offer suggestions for the current task.

Contextual Workspaces: Create, Shape, Grow and Manage workspaces that remember open panels, recent actions and preferred tools.

The Action Layer: A preview of each change, support for bulk requests such as “delete all spam comments,” and clear confirmation before destructive actions. I want undo to cover settings and content, though each action needs a reliable way to reverse it.

The Capability Registry: Plugins register what they can do, not where they live. “Create product” routes to WooCommerce. “Analyze SEO” routes to Yoast. “Add signup form” routes to whatever form plugin you have, or suggests one if you don’t, based on your actual needs, not ad spend. The intent layer becomes the universal translator between human goals and system capabilities.

Contextual Intelligence: The system knows where you are. Inside the block editor, “make this bigger” applies to your selected block. On the dashboard, “how’s my traffic?” pulls analytics. After publishing, “share this” knows what “this” means. Conversation flows naturally because context persists.

Why Now

Three things are true today that weren’t true before:

  1. AI can parse intent cheaply. What required million-dollar NLP teams is now an API call. Local models can run in browsers. The technology to understand “make my site faster” and route it to the right diagnostic tools exists and is accessible.
  2. Users expect it. People are getting used to asking software for what they need. I’d like WordPress to offer that alongside its menus.
  3. WordPress’s complexity has exceeded its interface. Full Site Editing, block patterns, global styles, template parts, synced patterns, navigation blocks, the power is there, buried under navigation archaeology. The block inserter alone has hundreds of options. The intent layer doesn’t add complexity; it makes existing complexity accessible.

Who it could help

For new users: WordPress stops being intimidating. You don’t need to learn WordPress vocabulary. You don’t need to know that signup forms require plugins, or that plugins require activation, or that new blocks require a page refresh. You describe what you want; it happens. The distance between “I want a website” and “I have a website” shrinks from hours to minutes.

For creators: Flow state becomes possible. Writing, designing, publishing without context-switching through menus. Voice commands while your hands shape blocks in the editor. Actions that anticipate your patterns and automate the tedious parts. “Publish and share to social” as one intent, not six screens.

For developers: Plugin distribution that doesn’t depend on users finding menu items. Capability-based integration that survives WordPress core changes. A stable intent API that lets you build once and surface everywhere. Analytics on how users actually describe what they want, product insight that’s currently invisible.

For WordPress: A way to find tools and change settings without adding more menu items. Help could appear when someone needs it.

The Stakes

WordPress has a choice. It can remain the world’s most powerful website building tool that nobody under 30 wants to use. It can watch while Framer, Webflow, Squarespace, and a dozen AI-native tools capture the next generation with interfaces that speak human.

Or it can lead.

The intent layer isn’t a feature. It’s a statement that WordPress understands how people actually want to work now. It’s the bridge between WordPress’s enormous power and the expectations of users who’ve been taught that software should understand them, not the other way around.

We’re not replacing WordPress. We’re not replacing the block editor. We’re giving them a voice, and ears.

Let’s Build It

Phase 1 is achievable in months, not years. A fuzzy-search intent bar with common action routing. Workspace tabs. Action history with undo. Coexistence with the existing menu. Prove the concept, measure the adoption, iterate.

Phase 2 adds local intelligence. Natural language parsing. Plugin capability registration. Context awareness within the block editor. The form example working end-to-end.

Phase 3 scales. Multi-site. External integrations. Automation and workflows. Voice interface. Full internationalization.

The architecture exists. The AI exists. The user need desperately exists, in every support forum post, every “how do I” Google search, every abandoned WordPress site that someone started with hope and quit in frustration.

What’s missing is the conviction that WordPress can be this, and the will to build it.

I want people to find what they need without a course or a long search through menus.

That’s what I want to build with the Intent Layer.