Wp Abilities Api

If you're working with WordPress 6.9+ and need to register abilities or categories in PHP, expose them via the wp-abilities/v1 REST endpoints, or consume them client-side with @wordpress/abilities, this handles the full stack. It walks you through the registration hooks, confirms REST exposure with show_in_rest meta, and sets up the JS consumption path. The debugging section is solid: it covers the usual culprits when abilities don't appear (wrong hook, missing meta flags, caching). Most useful when you're adding capability-like features that need to be queryable from the frontend without rolling your own REST endpoints.

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GitHub stars: 2.3K
last updated: Aug 21, 2026

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Install

$ npx -y skills add wordpress/agent-skills --skill wp-abilities-api --agent claude-code

Installs into .claude/skills of the current project.

Files

WP Abilities API

When to use

Use this skill when the task involves:

registering abilities or ability categories in PHP,
exposing abilities to clients via REST (wp-abilities/v1),
consuming abilities in JS (notably @wordpress/abilities),
diagnosing “ability doesn’t show up” / “client can’t see ability” / “REST returns empty”.

Inputs required

Repo root (run wp-project-triage first if you haven’t).
Target WordPress version(s) and whether this is WP core or a plugin/theme.
Where the change should live (plugin vs theme vs mu-plugin).

Procedure

Before deciding what to register, read references/domain-vs-projection.md — abilities live at the domain capability layer; MCP / Command Palette / REST exposure is a projection. Registration shape and exposure shape are different decisions, and conflating them forces re-registration every time a consumer's constraints change.

1) Confirm availability and version constraints

If this is WP core work, check signals.isWpCoreCheckout and versions.wordpress.core.
If the project targets WP < 6.9, you may need the Abilities API plugin/package rather than relying on core.

SKILL.md on GitHub