This month’s update from our core contributors. Here’s how Jessica and Tammie are helping shape the future of WordPress.
In October, Tammie Lister continued contributing to both the Core AI and Editor teams, representing Greyd in WordPress’s ongoing push toward a more integrated and intuitive platform.
Core AI
Within the Experiments Plugin (WordPress/ai), Tammie provided design feedback across multiple issues and pull requests, ensuring that each feature evolves with a clear and consistent interface. She also created new visual assets for the plugin’s GitHub repository and related communications, helping to strengthen the public presentation of these experiments (Plugin submission to WordPress.org – Issue #28).
One of the key milestones this month was the Abilities API, which successfully ships into WordPress 6.9. It’s a new foundational system that enables plugins, themes, and WordPress core to register and expose their capabilities in a standardized, machine-readable format.
Tammie contributed to defining its roadmap and milestones (Roadmap to WP 6.9 · Issue #83) and coded the new Abilities Explorer feature (Pull Request #63). She also updated the project pages in the WordPress Handbook and maintained the public project boards to provide better visibility into ongoing work.
Editor
On the Editor side, Tammie focused on unblocking design discussions for 6.9, providing feedback across comments and other areas. She triaged issues labeled needs design and needs design feedback, worked through the design backlog, and surfaced cross-team collaboration opportunities to keep progress steady across the block editor.
UX and Usability
Jessica Lyschik’s contribution this month centered on a long-awaited usability fix: her font size presets PR was reviewed, approved, and backmerged into 6.9 Beta 2 as a high-impact bug fix. This improvement resolves a recurring issue that affected multiple users, making it easier to select and apply custom font size presets. It’s a practical example of how real-world feedback can directly shape a smoother, more consistent editing experience for everyone using WordPress.
Why this matters
Together, these contributions strengthen WordPress at both ends of the spectrum — from the emerging AI framework that will shape future tools, to the design and usability refinements that improve the everyday experience for millions of users.
At Greyd, we see this work as part of a broader mission: helping WordPress grow sustainably through thoughtful design, accessible functionality, and the responsible adoption of new technologies.
See you next month
A big thank-you to our contributors for their ongoing commitment to improving WordPress. We’ll continue sharing monthly updates on their progress and the broader developments within the community.
