WordCamp Portugal 2026: Porto, accessibility, Abilities API and AI agencies

#WordCamp Portugal 2026 Porto recap {#opening}

I flew to Porto for WordCamp Portugal 2026, held on 15 and 16 May 2026 at the Fundação Dr. António Cupertino de Miranda, and the eleven sessions covered here changed how the WPPoland accessibility audit gets delivered. Several of them ran in parallel, so I followed some live and caught the rest from the recordings. They also sharpened the project queue for the WordPress Abilities API and gave me concrete language for the agency-model shift clients keep asking about after AI. Below is what each session covered, what it means for production WordPress and headless work, and the changes already shipped to wppoland.com on the back of it. Thanks to Toze Vasconcelos and Carolina Osório Pinho, two of the seventeen people on the organising team.

The format was two days. Friday 15 May was the community day, with pre-registration only. Saturday 16 May carried 17 talks across two tracks and 3 workshops in a separate room, according to the official programme.

#Does web accessibility improve SEO {#bovelett}

Anne-Mieke Bovelett, “The SEO visibility hack: unlocking 23% more traffic through accessibility”. The 23 per cent is the promise in the talk title. The substance was the mechanism behind it: every time a visitor bounces because the navigation is unreadable, abandons a form because the error message is confusing, or gives up on a cognitively overwhelming page, search engines record a failure signal. The point landed because she did not frame accessibility as compliance theatre. She framed it as something that shows up in the same signals SEO teams already watch, and gave content owners a no-code check, the 5-Second Clarity Test, that they can run on any page without waiting for a developer.

Her argument also reaches past Google. Accessible, well-structured content is what both human visitors and AI search agents need to do their job, which ties the WCAG 2.2 AA work to the machine-readability work most clients are now asking about.

The practical move on the WPPoland side is already shipped: the accessibility-audit page on /en/services/accessibility-audit-wcag/ lists Anne-Mieke’s session as a citation source, and the conformance report carries an overlap-analysis appendix so the fix list can be sorted by both legal exposure and organic-search impact. Same audit, two assessment axes, one decision tree.

#What is the WordPress Abilities API {#abilities-api}

Uros Tasic, “WordPress Abilities API: bridging the gap between code and AI”. This was a 90-minute workshop for plugin developers rather than a talk. The session abstract describes the Abilities API as a first-class, cross-context functional registry that standardises how functionality is defined and exposed in WordPress, and the workshop showed how its pieces fit together with the rest of the WordPress AI API.

The API itself shipped in WordPress 6.9. The core dev note and the developer handbook define the moving parts:

• An ability is a self-contained unit of functionality with a namespaced name (my-plugin/get-post-count), a label, a description, a category, JSON Schema definitions for input and output, an execute callback and an optional permission callback.
• Abilities are registered with wp_register_ability() on the wp_abilities_api_init action, and categories with wp_register_ability_category() on wp_abilities_api_categories_init. Registering outside those hooks triggers a _doing_it_wrong() notice and the registration fails.
• When enabled, registered abilities are exposed under the wp-abilities/v1 REST namespace, including a /run endpoint that executes an ability.
• Two actions, wp_before_execute_ability and wp_after_execute_ability, wrap every execution, which is where logging and auditing hook in.

The cleanest analogue is the MCP server pattern, and the two now connect directly: the official MCP Adapter package turns registered abilities into MCP tools, resources and prompts for AI agents.

For agencies, this is the most interesting WordPress platform move of the year because it changes the integration story for two product types I keep getting briefed on. First, back-office automation where a content team wants a real assistant rather than a chat window. Second, customer-side AI features that need to perform admin actions (moderate a comment, schedule a post) under a permission check instead of a shared wp-admin password.

#AI features already in WordPress core {#wp-ai-core}

Jorge Costa, “AI is in WordPress core. Here’s how to use it”. Jorge is a core committer, and his session dug into the AI building blocks already shipped: the WP AI Client, the Abilities API and the MCP adapter, and how to use them in plugins, themes and sites. He closed on a bigger question from his abstract: when agents can spin up entire projects on any stack, why WordPress is still the right bet.

The provider layer is worth spelling out. The standalone wp-ai-client package, an AI client that talks to models of different providers through one uniform API, is now archived and marked deprecated in favour of the AI client built into WordPress 7.0. On 7.0 and later its PHP SDK infrastructure is disabled because core handles it, while its REST endpoints and JavaScript API stay active until those land in core too.

The takeaway for client projects: stop treating WordPress as a CMS that always needs a separate AI plugin layer for model wiring. The client and the registry now live in core. Plugin layers should add product-specific intelligence, such as editorial taxonomy, industry vocabulary and safety rules, plus the abilities that describe what the site can do.

#How to build admin tools with the WordPress AI API {#welcher-studio}

Ryan Welcher, “Stop doing it yourself: building AI-powered admin tools with the WordPress AI API”. Ryan ran a 3.5-hour hands-on workshop for developers with plugin experience. The problem statement was the tedious work after a post is written: categories, tags, meta description, alt text, comment approval, taxonomy housekeeping. The workshop combined three pieces of the WordPress AI Building Blocks initiative:

1. Custom abilities. The Abilities API defines what the site can do: creating posts with metadata, setting up taxonomy structures, moderating comments, auditing media.
2. Connectors. A settings screen in WP Admin where API credentials for providers such as OpenAI, Anthropic and Google are configured once for every plugin on the site, instead of hardcoded keys or per-plugin settings.
3. The JavaScript AI Client. Used from the admin with its built-in prompt builder to send prompts, receive structured responses and trigger the custom abilities.

The example requests in the abstract show the target: publish this post as a draft in a given category with tags and a meta description under 160 characters, create a category tree, approve pending comments, find images without alt text and suggest some from the filename. One slide showed Studio Write, which its own site describes as an editor, AI chat and research workspace in one, a macOS beta and an Automattic experiment rather than an official product. The reusable part for client work is the pattern, not the app: abilities for the operations, one credential store, one client.

#WordPress development with Claude Code {#claude-code}

JuanMa Garrido, “WordPress development and management with Claude Code”. JuanMa, who works in developer relations, showed Claude Code as a command center for WordPress development and site management from the terminal. He structured it around three capabilities: Skills (knowledge packs for tasks such as plugin development or block theme creation), MCP (the Model Context Protocol, which connects the agent to WordPress, GitHub, Figma or n8n) and the Abilities API. The live demos generated a block theme from an HTML design, queried a production blog in natural language, installed plugins and read error logs without leaving the terminal.

His caveat is the useful part: the demos used Claude Code, but MCP, Skills and the Abilities API are standards that transfer to any coding agent that supports them. What I have taken into WPPoland work is the habit of running content and code checks as terminal loops against explicit criteria, rather than as one-off manual read-throughs.

#How AI changes WordPress agency pricing {#agency-reset}

Juan Manuel Rodriguez Jurado, “The agency reset: how AI is forcing the best business model upgrade in a decade”. Juan Manuel argued that the agency model is being upgraded rather than dying, and mapped three shifts happening at the same time:

• From projects to partnerships. One-off builds give way to ongoing relationships. His abstract states that agencies which automated routine maintenance freed up to 80 per cent of repetitive workload and moved that time into advisory work.
• From deliverables to decisions. The offer moves from “we build your site” to “we guide your digital strategy”, and agencies selling AI-augmented consulting report higher monthly retainers than project shops.
• From isolation to ecosystem. Community participation, open source contribution and public knowledge build a moat that platform shifts cannot commoditise.

He grounded this in pricing data and conversations with more than 1,000 agencies over two years, figures from his abstract rather than independently published data. It matches what I see in inbound briefs. Clients who arrive with an outcome (“our SaaS marketing site needs a measurable lift in demo bookings”) make decisions more clearly than clients who arrive with a list of things to build (“we need a new WordPress theme”). If AI lowers production cost, hourly pricing becomes a weaker model for senior-led work, which is my reading, not a figure from the talk.

#Other WordCamp Portugal 2026 talks worth watching {#mentions}

• Milana Cap, “WordPress gems for devs: Accessibility with Interactivity API”. Milana presented the Interactivity API, inspired by Symfony’s Live components and built for speed, extensibility and server-side rendering, as an API designed with accessibility best practices in mind. If you are still hand-rolling client-side state in WordPress front-ends, this is the talk to watch.
• Imran Sayed, “The fastest way to build Gutenberg blocks: modern tools, scripts, and AI”. A focused tooling session on practical workflows for building custom blocks fast without over-engineering.
• Jorge Cabaço, “Beyond the funnel: how AI is redefining customer journeys”. Why the linear awareness, consideration, conversion funnel no longer explains behaviour when search, recommendations and conversational agents start the journey. It pairs well with Juan Manuel’s session on agency change.
• Gustavo Galati, “Web design for 2026”. Design foundations, what AI changed in the design process, the trends heading into 2026 and the tools he uses daily, with downloadable resources and examples built on WordPress.
• Gemny Andreina Ibarra Salamanca, “From burnout to balance: build your AI accountability bot”. A two-hour, no-code workshop that builds a Telegram bot on Make.com, with responses from OpenAI or from a Google Sheet, to check in daily on well-being and goals. Useful for solo operators and small agencies.

#WordCamp Portugal 2026 Saturday programme overview {#programme}

The eleven sessions above are about half of Saturday. The rest of the programme, summarised from the official session abstracts:

• José Freitas, the F.A.C.E. method (Function, Activity, Context, Execution) for giving AI enough context to produce specific, brand-consistent articles, guides and case studies. It opened Track 1.
• Lucas Catão de Moraes, AI on both sides of WordPress security: as a defence tool and as a weapon for automated attacks.
• Wajari Velasquez, a Spanish-language talk on how LLMs change search, when answers arrive before clicks and ranking turns into a fight for recommendation.
• Filipa Simões de Freitas, the client side of WordPress projects: briefings that prevent problems, scope creep, translating technical language into business decisions.
• Pedro Fonseca, preparing WooCommerce for AI shopping agents through the Model Context Protocol and a 50-point technical checklist.
• Slobodan Manic, machine-first architecture: semantic HTML and Schema.org on the site, entity signals and knowledge graph presence off it.
• Carlos Moreira, prototyping with AI tools such as Lovable, Bolt, Replit and v0 against the WordPress REST API.
• Marcel Schmitz, agentic engineering for senior developers, from vibe coding to a test-backed workflow, with an open-source MCP toolkit published under pluginslab on GitHub.
• Simon Kraft, the Cyber Resilience Act and what it means for maintainers of open source software such as WordPress plugins (more on the dates below).

#What happened on the WordCamp Portugal community day {#community-day}

Friday 15 May drew 130 participants, a record for the event according to the organisers’ recap. For the second year the day replaced the classic contributor-day model with collaboration tables, open conversation hubs on six topics: security and trust, AI and WordPress, SEO/GEO and performance, design and accessibility, translations and community, and freelancers and agencies. The freelancers and agencies table was new this year and, per the recap, one of the most active.

The afternoon ran a community forum on the state of the Portuguese WordPress community, then three sharing sessions:

• Nilo Velez on what the WordPress project offers beyond development: learning platforms, community support, the photo and media directories, design resources and ways to contribute.
• Marcel Schmitz on WP Agentic Admin, a privacy-first assistant that runs a small language model on the GPU entirely in the browser, with no cloud API. It came out of the CloudFest Hackathon 2026.
• Tiago Santos, who stepped in for Shadi Sharaf, on an agentic workflow built around describing outcomes, orchestrating agents and reviewing diffs, with the guardrails that keep the output production-ready.

A 30-minute panel with the three speakers on the impact of AI on the WordPress community closed the day.

#What the Cyber Resilience Act means for WordPress plugin developers {#cra}

Simon Kraft’s abstract starts from one date: parts of the Cyber Resilience Act take effect in September 2026. The regulation, Regulation (EU) 2024/2847, phases in under its Article 71:

Article 14 is the one plugin businesses feel first. A manufacturer must report an actively exploited vulnerability in its product through the single reporting platform to the coordinating CSIRT and to ENISA: an early warning within 24 hours of becoming aware of it and a vulnerability notification within 72 hours.

Open source gets a separate track. The regulation defines open-source software stewards, organisations that support free software intended for commercial use on a sustained basis, and puts them under a light-touch regime in Article 24: a documented cybersecurity policy, vulnerability handling and cooperation with market surveillance authorities. Which role a given plugin vendor has depends on how it monetises the product; my longer CRA, NIS2 and DORA guide covers the evidence side.

#How to watch the WordCamp Portugal 2026 recordings {#recordings}

Since 21 May 2026 the recordings of all talks are on WordPress.tv, according to the organisers’ announcement. The organisers also embedded each video together with the speaker’s slides on the session pages, so the fastest route is the official schedule: open a session and the recording and slides sit on the same page. That is also the practical way to catch up on a parallel track, which on Saturday meant most of the workshops.

#WordCamp Portugal takeaways for WordPress clients {#takeaways}

Three concrete changes in WPPoland work have come out of the conference in Porto:

1. The accessibility audit has been expanded. The conformance report includes the SEO-overlap appendix, with each WCAG 2.2 AA failure marked for both legal exposure and on-page SEO impact. Same audit, individually priced, two assessment axes, one prioritised fix list.
2. WordPress Abilities API on the Tech Radar. The entry now sits in the Trial ring. If you are scoping an agent-side WordPress integration in the next six months, this is the platform conversation to start.
3. The pricing conversation is clearer in the engagement-model section. Outcome-anchored project definitions now get explicit treatment. The engagement-model section of /en/about/ already carried this idea, and the proposal template now anchors against a written success criterion rather than a simple delivery list.

#Sources and reading

• WordCamp Portugal 2026 programme: https://portugal.wordcamp.org/2026/programa/
• WordCamp Portugal 2026 speakers: https://portugal.wordcamp.org/2026/speakers/
• Community day recap: https://portugal.wordcamp.org/2026/community-day-recap/
• Recordings and slides announcement: https://portugal.wordcamp.org/2026/talk-recordings-and-slides-are-now-available/
• Abilities API in WordPress 6.9, core dev note: https://make.wordpress.org/core/2025/11/10/abilities-api-in-wordpress-6-9/
• Abilities API, developer handbook: https://developer.wordpress.org/apis/abilities-api/
• MCP Adapter: https://github.com/WordPress/mcp-adapter
• WordPress AI Client (archived, superseded by core in 7.0): https://github.com/WordPress/wp-ai-client
• Cyber Resilience Act, Regulation (EU) 2024/2847: https://eur-lex.europa.eu/eli/reg/2024/2847/oj
• WPPoland accessibility-audit pillar (citing Anne-Mieke Bovelett): https://wppoland.com/en/services/accessibility-audit-wcag/
• WPPoland Tech Radar (Abilities API entry): https://wppoland.com/en/tech-radar/

Thanks again to Toze Vasconcelos and Carolina Osório Pinho, and to the rest of the organising team, for an event that delivered more practical engineering material per hour than I have seen at a regional WordCamp in years.

Last updated: 15 October 2026.