Learning objectives
By the end of this exercise, you will be able to:
- Locate the abilities currently registered on your WordPress site
- Explain what an ability does in terms of the input it takes and the output it produces
- Test an existing ability directly, outside of any specific AI feature
Before you begin
This requires a local development environment or live site. Playground can help you browse the concept, but it cannot make live AI calls, so testing an ability directly requires your own site. You do not need any new provider setup beyond what you configured in Module 1.
Before you start looking, enable Custom Abilities in Settings > AI > Admin Experiments, alongside Abilities Explorer. As of AI plugin 1.3.0, five plugin abilities (ai/get-post-details, ai/get-post-terms, core/read-settings, core/read-users, and core/read-content) are opt-in rather than registered automatically. If you skip this step, you’ll see fewer abilities than this exercise expects.
Finding what’s already there
Every AI feature you’ve used so far, including alt text generation, title generation, and comment moderation, is backed by one or more abilities. An ability is a defined, reusable task that an AI feature can call: it takes a specific input and returns a specific output.
Locate the abilities registered on your site and read through a few: what does each one accept as input, and what does it return?
📸 Screenshot placeholder: the abilities list in wp-admin showing a handful of registered abilities and their descriptions.
Testing an ability directly
Pick one ability and run it directly, separate from the plugin feature that normally calls it. The input you give it needs to match what that ability actually expects: a summary ability needs a paragraph of text, an alt-text ability needs an image, and so on. Check what the ability’s description says it accepts before you test it, so you’re not left wondering why nothing happens.
Compare the raw output to what you saw when the feature used it.
💡 Why this matters for you: Abilities are the reusable building block underneath every AI feature on your site. Seeing one on its own, outside a specific feature, is what makes registering your own ability in the next practical make sense rather than feel abstract.
What you’ll have when you’re done: a short list of the abilities on your site, what each does, and the raw output from testing one directly.
✅ Check your understanding
- Which existing ability surprised you most once you saw its raw input and output, and why?
- Based on what you saw, what would make a good candidate for a new ability you could register yourself?