WordPress Plugin Development For Claude
A Claude skill that helps you build WordPress plugins correctly and pass wp.org Plugin Directory review on the first try.
Submitted upstream to Anthropic's official skills repository: anthropics/skills #1198. This repo is the maintained mirror by AtlasAiDev — same content, available immediately while the upstream PR is in review.
What it covers
The skill distills two bodies of knowledge plugin authors learn the slow way (through closure emails):
- The official WordPress Plugin Developer Handbook — security, hooks, REST routes, shortcodes, blocks, CPTs/taxonomies, settings & meta, privacy/GDPR, users/roles, HTTP API, WP-Cron, JS/Ajax, i18n, readme/assets/SVN.
- The 19 wp.org Plugin Directory guidelines — and specifically the patterns that actually cause closures:
- Trialware (Guideline 5) — locked code in the free ZIP
- Phoning home without explicit opt-in (Guideline 7)
- Remote-loaded JS/CSS / CDN assets (Guideline 8)
- Missing source for minified/compiled files (Guideline 4)
- Wrong text-domain literal (must equal plugin slug)
- Missing
permission_callback on REST routes
- Vendored library collisions (Freemius, Guzzle, etc.)
SKILL.md is a fast triage layer; ten reference files load lazily only when relevant, so the skill is cheap to trigger.
When Claude uses it
Triggers automatically when working on:
- Code under
wp-content/plugins/
- Symbols like
register_rest_route, add_shortcode, register_post_type, register_setting, current_user_can, esc_html__, WP_PLUGIN_DIR, or Freemius
- A wp.org closure response, a Plugin Check warning, or a pre-submission audit
Explicitly skips WordPress themes (different review track), standalone PHP outside a plugin, and pure JS/frontend work.
Install
Claude Code — via AtlasAiDev marketplace (recommended)
Inside Claude Code, run:
/plugin marketplace add atlasaidev/claude-wordpress-skill
/plugin install wordpress-plugin-development@atlasaidev
That's it — the skill is registered and Claude will load it whenever you work on a WordPress plugin. Verify with /plugin or /skills.
To update later: /plugin marketplace update atlasaidev.
Claude Code — manual install
If you'd rather not use the marketplace, copy the skill folder into your user-level skills directory:
macOS / Linux:
git clone https://github.com/atlasaidev/claude-wordpress-skill.git /tmp/cwp
cp -r /tmp/cwp/skills/wordpress-plugin-development \
~/.claude/skills/wordpress-plugin-development
Windows (PowerShell):
git clone https://github.com/atlasaidev/claude-wordpress-skill.git $env:TEMP\cwp
Copy-Item -Recurse $env:TEMP\cwp\skills\wordpress-plugin-development `
"$env:USERPROFILE\.claude\skills\wordpress-plugin-development"
Claude.ai (paid plans)
Upload skills/wordpress-plugin-development/SKILL.md + the references/ folder via Settings → Skills → Upload custom skill.
Once approved in the Claude community marketplace
This plugin has been submitted to Anthropic's community marketplace (see submission status below). After approval, it'll be installable as:
/plugin marketplace add anthropics/claude-plugins-community
/plugin install wordpress-plugin-development@claude-community
We're also tracking a parallel submission to the Anthropic example-skills repo at anthropics/skills #1198 — separate curation track.
Submission status
| Marketplace | Status | Install command (when live) |
|---|
| AtlasAiDev (this repo) | ✅ Live | /plugin marketplace add atlasaidev/claude-wordpress-skill |
claude-plugins-community | 🕒 Submitted, awaiting review | /plugin install wordpress-plugin-development@claude-community |
anthropics/skills (example-skills) | 🕒 PR #1198 open | /plugin marketplace add anthropics/skills |
claude-plugins-official | — | Anthropic-curated, no application path |
Repository structure
