Hi, {{first_name|friend}}. 👋
Welcome to Issue #197 of Loop WP!
Last week was about the block and classic checkouts in WooCommerce. The results of 10,000 websites may surprise you.
This week, we catch up with the James LePage (Automattic AI lead, WordPress Core AI co-lead) interview on the Do The Woo Podcast on the role of AI in WooCommerce.
Let’s go! 👇
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The Future of eCommerce is Already Here?
Automattic is positioning WooCommerce as a central hub for AI "enablement" by building foundational protocols like MCP (Model Context Protocol).
While current tools are developer-centric, the roadmap includes native AI features for merchants, predictive analytics, and a transition toward an "agentic web" where AI agents can browse and purchase on behalf of users.
✅ James Kemp (Core Product Manager for WooCommerce) and Katie Keith (Founder & CEO of Barn2 Plugins) did some wonderful work hosting the interview; it’s more than worth the listen.
Katie often brought a perspective from store owners, which was refreshing and important. We (devs, builders and designers) can often get stuck in a bubble.
So let’s take a look at the key points (in my opinion) from the interview with James LePage (Automattic AI lead, WordPress Core AI co-lead).
💡 = My thoughts and comments.
I’ll be keeping things a little more succinct after spending three issues on Beau’s interview and two issues on Matt’s. 👇
1) The core strategy: “Enablement” over “one perfect AI feature”
Enablement is the repeatedly emphasised:
WooCommerce should remain “in the middle” of whatever AI tooling merchants use (best chatbot, best analytics AI, etc.).
Build foundational primitives once, keep them stable, and adapt to whichever protocol wins next.
💡 Why that matters: the AI ecosystem is moving too quickly for one hard-baked approach.
2) What’s available in WooCommerce today
WooCommerce MCP is positioned as the headline “shipped” capability:
Built on WordPress’s Abilities API.
Adds Model Context Protocol support so AI clients can connect to Woo and “do things” conversationally.
Early/experimental vibe today (more for excited builders), but expected to become more accessible (“glow up”) in future.
Also mentioned:
Marketplace AI plugins bundle features like product title generation, image generation, and early bulk operations.
Jetpack AI improvements coming (notably image/background manipulation, mockups).
🚨 And a “sneaky announcement”:
More WooCommerce AI features aimed directly at merchants are coming soon (from Automattic/Woo).
💡 I don’t know what these AI features are, but if they are aimed at Merchants, I wonder whether they will impact the bottom line or the services of agencies and freelancers?
3) Protocols and standards: MCP now, but don’t marry it
James LePage and James Kemp discussed the “standards” chaos:
MCP is “young” and evolving fast, but it has mass adoption and includes important solved bits (notably authentication).
Other protocols exist or are emerging (they mention Agentic Commerce Protocol and Universal Commerce Protocol).
Woo/WordPress design goal: keep core primitives stable, so support can be added/updated as protocols shift.
🚨 Woo doesn’t want to bet everything on MCP’s permanence, just on adapters + primitives.
4) Developer-first right now, but the barrier is dropping
Katie’s observation (confirmed by James LePage): most of what’s landing in core is developer tooling, not merchant UX.
However, they argue that “developer” is broadening:
AI-assisted development and better docs/tutorials reduce friction.
Experimentation is easier (they cite “Cloud Code” as a way to explore/build quickly).
Expect wrappers and standardisation around setup, so MCP-like integrations aren’t so technical over time.
💡 I think how quickly this barrier falls is vital, as Shopify is already leaps and bounds ahead in terms of merchant AI features.
5) “Sidekick-like” AI inside Woo/WordPress
Katie Keith brought up the Shopify Sidekick comparison directly.
The responses are summarised as follows:
A merchant-facing, action-taking assistant is likely to be a plugin/extension territory first, mainly from Automattic.
Reason: a shallow core version is limited; the “great” version requires deep integrations (Analytics, orchestration, bulk catalogue ops, etc.).
Longer-term: agencies may routinely ship custom agents for clients.
James LePage predicts an almost surreal near future with merchants asking for “a little agent on my Woo site”, the way they ask for other standard store features today.
💡 If you’ve been reading my newsletter for a while, you will know I am a big fan of Shopify’s Sidekick. Woo is behind on this, and I hope we get something soon.
6) A Front-end Future
They predict the web won’t flip overnight, but a new class of “actors” appears: AI agents browsing and transacting.
Front-end implications:
More structured data, schema, and machine-readable markup.
More emphasis on open data: discoverable and programmatically accessible store info.
Mention of web MCP (front-end MCP) and a Chrome early developer preview, implying browser-level agent/store interactions.
They also expect growth of:
On-site AI chat is becoming standard (order status, product fit, recommendations).
Possible “agent that represents the site” as part of a broader agentic internet.
7) Personalisation
They discuss personalisation from two angles:
Off-site personalisation inside AI clients (ChatGPT/Claude knowing preferences and shopping history).
On-site personalisation (historically under-adopted in WP), which AI may unlock.
They also point out that catalogues are often messy and fragmented, and AI can help clean/normalise data and fill missing fields.
💡 James Kemp highlights the potential of hyper-personalised AI-created landing pages to increase conversions and deliver a truly individual shopping experience.
This greatly intrigues me. Google has announced something similar for search results pages and already has a patent.
8) AI Purchase Journey recommendations vs checkout vs full purchase
The interview breaks down the “AI purchase journey” into stages:
Discovery/recommendation (already happening in AI search tools).
Click-through to cart/checkout (payment links, handoff flows).
Full agent purchase (hard part).
🚨 For Stage 3, it’s further discussed:
Need for protocols because many AI clients + many merchant systems.
Woo plans to support both of these so merchants can benefit early as the market shifts.
💡 If you had asked me back in October 2025 whether I was confident with WooCommerce, AI and the Agentic future, I would have been hesitant.
However, a lot has happened in the last four months, and there’s a lot more to come. It’s a very exciting time of rapid development.
9) Community Contributions
Nik McLaughlin (Skyverge) asked where extensions/community should contribute, beyond just exposing existing functionality.
James LePage’s answer focuses on building new AI-native capabilities atop core primitives:
WordPress: build on Core AI efforts (Abilities API → “workflows” chaining abilities).
WooCommerce: open PRs/issues for “quality of life” hooks/filters/features that unblock real AI implementations.
Encourage extension authors (membership plugins, LMS, CRMs, etc.) to define abilities so agents can manage their domain consistently.
🤔 At the moment, it’s about “building blocks” and a “glue” future:
Multiple plugins + abilities = unified AI interaction layer that makes complexity invisible to merchants.
It’s also noted that even if the hosts are early adopters, once both sides (supply + demand) are addressed, “there will be a flood” of investment, tools, and adoption.
💡 It’s worth listening to the answer in full to understand where both Jameses are coming from, and it’s an interesting concept (particularly using the membership example).
I’d love to hear your thoughts {{first_name|friend}}, reply or leave a comment and let me know.
That’s it for this week. 👋
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Weekly WordPress News & Tips
This week's excellent and insightful WordPress News & Tips:
🚨 What You Need To Do - Store API Vulnerability Patched in WooCommerce 5.4+ (WooCommerce Dev Blog)
Schema Aggregation - Futureproof your website for the agentic web with Yoast SEO. (Yoast)
New Google Help Document - On Universal Commerce Protocol (UCP) Checkout. (SEO Roundtable)
Fourth Attempt - Automattic Again Seeks to Dismiss WP Engine’s Latest Complaint, Moves to Drop WooCommerce From Case. (The Repository)
ChatGPT Hack - Optimise WooCommerce for Google Shopping. (Rocket[dot]net)
Agent Skills - The Markdown files I’ve been waiting for. (Brian Coords)
🚀 MilliCache - In-memory caching powered by Redis or ValKey. Built for scaling WordPress sites and networks, driven by Rules and Flags. (MilliPress)
Open Source - Thank you for everything you ship. Claude Max is on us for 6 months. (Claude)
Turning Terminal Into… - A toolkit for coding agents like Claude Code, Amp, Cursor, OpenCode, and Codex to help you build UIs that don't suck. (UI.ish)
Raising the Bar - Fueled Leads the Continued Advancement of Applied AI in WordPress. (Fueled)
Practical Example - How to Use the WordPress AI Client. (Rich Tabor)
wp-blockmarkup-mcp - Give your AI assistant a verified block markup database instead of letting it guess Gutenberg HTML. (Marcel Schmitz)
🤯 Your Landing Page Suck - This patent empowers Google to automatically create AI-landing pages that replace brand results. (Chris Long)
Project Pivots to TYPO3 - Joost de Valk and Karim Marucchi Step Away from FAIR. (The Repository)
If you have a question about this email or WordPress, please reply, and I will respond as soon as possible.
👋 Until next time,
