{"slug": "a-new-workspace-for-building-with-wordpress", "title": "A New Workspace for Building with WordPress", "summary": "WordPress.com moved the AI agent in WordPress Studio from an August beta feature to the center of the free desktop app, rebuilding the workspace around a chat-plus-live-preview layout for macOS, Windows, and Linux. The release adds a design flow that offers four looks and then four layouts before building, saves the result as a DESIGN.md design system file, and lets users pick Fast, Balanced, or Strong tiers via WordPress.com AI credits or connect their own Anthropic API key, with other providers to come. The same agent is available through the Studio CLI (studio code, studio ui) and can be connected to Claude Code, Codex, or Cursor via the Model Context Protocol.", "body_md": "In [WordPress Studio](https://developer.wordpress.com/studio), a website starts as a conversation. You describe what you want, and an AI agent builds a first version for you. To change something, just tell the agent what you’d like instead.\n\nIf you’ve used an agentic coding tool recently, the latest version of WordPress Studio will feel familiar. You’ll find a chat next to a live preview of your site, a choice of models for each task, and the option to use your own API key or let WordPress.com handle it for you.\n\nThat’s WordPress Studio today: a free desktop app designed for modern workflows with support for macOS, Windows, and Linux.\n\n## How we got here\n\nBack in August, the [AI agent was added to WordPress Studio](https://wordpress.com/blog/2026/08/24/studio-agentic-beta/) as a beta feature. It’s now at the center of the app, and what you told us during the beta period shaped how we rebuilt the workspace around it. Mostly, that meant making WordPress Studio simpler to navigate. Your sites and their chats live in one sidebar, site and app settings share a single Settings window, and the commands you used to hunt for are a keystroke away. WordPress Studio now feels less like a collection of features and more like one place to build your WordPress sites.\n\nPrefer the terminal? The same agent is there too. Install the [Studio CLI](https://developer.wordpress.com/docs/developer-tools/studio/cli/?utm_source=wpcom_blog&utm_medium=referral&utm_campaign=studio_2_1) and run studio code to chat with it, or studio ui to open the full workspace in your browser.\n\nThe basics haven’t changed. You still build sites on your computer, share a preview link when you want feedback, and decide where your site lives when you’re ready.\n\n## Start with a direction\n\nFinding the right look for a new site usually takes some back and forth, and the new design flow is built for exactly that. Ask the agent for a site, like “Build a site for my slow-fashion journal called Moire,” and it shows you four looks to choose from. Pick one, and it shows you four layouts in that style. Pick again, and it starts building.\n\nIf you already know what you want, describe the design in your request and the agent skips the questions. Either way, the agent saves the result as a design system: a `DESIGN.md` file in your site’s folder. Later chats follow it, so your site keeps a consistent look as it grows.\n\n## A smarter WordPress Studio agent\n\n[WordPress Studio Code](https://wordpress.com/blog/2026/04/27/studio-code-beta/) is the WordPress harness behind the conversation, the tools and context the agent works with. It’s why the agent checks its blocks against the block editor before adding them to your site, and reviews its own work by taking screenshots. When you want to point at something specific, turn on **Annotate**, pin notes to elements in the preview, and send them to the agent all at once.\n\nYou also decide how much power each chat gets. With WordPress.com AI credits, pick **Fast** for everyday edits, **Balanced** for work that needs more careful reasoning, or **Strong** for complex, multi-step builds. Balanced and Strong now run on newer models. If you connect your own Anthropic API key, you choose the model directly, and support for other providers is on the way.\n\nWhichever model you use, you can add custom instructions once in **Settings → Instructions**, such as “My sites are for restaurants,” and the agent follows them in every new chat.\n\n## Publish your site\n\nWordPress Studio already lets you pull a connected WordPress.com or Pressable site down to your computer and push your changes back up. Now the agent works either way: build locally and push when you’re ready, or point it at your live site and let it make changes there directly.\n\n## Bring your own agent\n\nAlready building with another agent, like Claude Code, Codex, or Cursor? Connect it to WordPress Studio through the [Model Context Protocol](https://developer.wordpress.com/docs/developer-tools/studio/mcp-on-studio/?utm_source=wpcom_blog&utm_medium=referral&utm_campaign=studio_2_1) (MCP). Instructions are available in **Settings → MCP.** It works through the same WordPress harness as the built-in agent: the tools, the custom instructions, and the WordPress skills that know how to build, edit, and publish a site.\n\n## Everything within reach\n\nThe new navigation is built around the sites you work on most. Pin the ones you use often, pick up a recent chat right where you left off, and press ⌘K (Ctrl+K on Windows and Linux) to open the command palette and jump to any site, chat, or action.\n\nYou can also make the workspace your own. In **Settings → Appearance**, choose a light or dark theme, pick an accent color, and adjust how strongly it tints the interface and how much contrast there is between surfaces.\n\n## How we build now\n\nMore and more, building for the web means working alongside an AI agent: you describe what you want and watch your site take shape as you talk. WordPress Studio brings that way of working to WordPress, and we’re shipping updates faster than we ever have. It’s everything WordPress does well, with an agent that knows it inside and out, in one app you can download today.\n\nStart your next project in the new workspace, and let us know what you think.", "url": "https://wpnews.pro/news/a-new-workspace-for-building-with-wordpress", "canonical_source": "https://wordpress.com/blog/2026/11/04/wordpress-studio-workspace/", "published_at": "2026-11-04 16:33:17+00:00", "updated_at": "2026-11-04 17:51:24.480365+00:00", "lang": "en", "topics": ["ai-agents", "ai-tools", "agent-protocols", "developer-tools", "ai-products"], "entities": ["WordPress Studio", "WordPress.com", "WordPress Studio Code", "Anthropic", "Claude Code", "Codex", "Cursor", "Pressable"], "also_reported_by": [], "alternates": {"html": "https://wpnews.pro/news/a-new-workspace-for-building-with-wordpress", "markdown": "https://wpnews.pro/news/a-new-workspace-for-building-with-wordpress.md", "text": "https://wpnews.pro/news/a-new-workspace-for-building-with-wordpress.txt", "jsonld": "https://wpnews.pro/news/a-new-workspace-for-building-with-wordpress.jsonld"}}