An agent skill for developing, reviewing, and refactoring WordPress plugins: architecture and hooks, activation/deactivation/uninstall lifecycle, the Settings API, data storage and cron, a security baseline (nonces, capabilities, sanitization/escaping, SQL safety), and a priority-ordered code-review checklist.
Built by 84EM for use with Claude Code and other agent harnesses that load Agent Skills.
| Path | What it is | License |
|---|---|---|
SKILL.md |
The skill: architecture guidelines, the plugin lifecycle, Settings API usage, the security baseline, data/cron guidance, and the review-priority order | MIT |
references/structure.md |
Plugin file/namespace organization guidance | MIT |
references/lifecycle.md |
Activation/deactivation/uninstall hook guardrails | MIT |
references/settings-api.md |
Settings API registration and sanitization patterns | MIT |
references/security.md |
The security baseline in depth | MIT |
references/data-and-cron.md |
Data storage and cron-task guidance | MIT |
references/debugging.md |
Common failure modes and how to diagnose them | MIT |
scripts/detect_plugins.mjs |
Deterministic scan that detects plugin headers in a repo | MIT |
Claude Code (personal skill): clone and symlink into your skills directory.
git clone https://github.com/84emllc/claude-wp-plugin-development-skill.git
ln -sfn "$(pwd)/claude-wp-plugin-development-skill" ~/.claude/skills/wp-plugin-developmentThe skill is then discoverable by its name and description frontmatter. No build step is required.
Ask the agent to build, extend, or review a WordPress plugin. It follows a fixed procedure: triage the repo, locate plugin entrypoints, then work through architecture, lifecycle hooks, settings, security, and data/cron guidance as relevant, pulling in the matching references/*.md file for depth. In review mode it works a fixed priority order: security first, then coding-standard compliance, performance, testability, error handling, and internationalization.
Two references depend on skills not included in this repo. SKILL.md calls out to a separate wp-project-triage skill's detection script for the initial repo-triage step, and defers test-writing guidance to a separate wp-plugin-testing skill. Neither is included here; either supply your own equivalents or treat those two references as pointers to write your own tooling. references/structure.md also documents an EightyFourEM\ PSR-4 namespace convention specific to 84EM's own projects -- adapt the namespace to your own if you're not building for 84EM.
MIT. See LICENSE.