The Abilities API is one of the newest pieces of the WordPress developer toolkit. It provides a way for plugins and core features to describe what they can do — their abilities — in a structured, machine-readable format. These abilities can then be exposed to LLMs as tools via an mcp-adapter (and can also be triggered via Command Palette commands). This is becoming an important foundation for AI-related projects in WordPress, because it lets tools discover and interact with features automatically.
The Abilities API is part of the AI Building Blocks for WordPress initiative
On the other side, we have DataViews and DataForm — two powerful React components that make it easier to build modern admin screens in WordPress. They’re the same systems used in places like the templates and page dashboards in the Site Editor, and they’re quickly becoming the standard for how we display, filter, and edit data inside the WordPress admin dashboard.
A few days ago, Tammie Lister shared a really cool plugin called Abilities Explorer. It lets you browse and understand what the new Abilities API can do.
You can also read her post about it here: Exploring Abilities.
When I saw it, I smiled — because building something like that was already on my to-do list. I’d been thinking about creating an Abilities Dashboard for a while, but using DataViews instead of PHP.
I few weeks ago I streamed about Abilities API.
And every now and then, I take a deeper look at DataViews and DataForm. I’ve streamed about it in English and in Spanish:
I’ve also written a couple of posts about this topic for the WordPress Developer Blog:
- Using Data Views to display and interact with data in plugins
- Actions from Data Views: adding images to the Media Library
Those explorations really helped me understand the UI use cases where DataViews and DataForm shine. So when I came across Tammie’s plugin, I thought it was time to give this approach a try — even if just as an experiment and reference.
My idea was to build a Dashboard that displays the Abilities registered using the JavaScript Abilities API and powered by DataViews. This approach makes everything happen on the client side and to me it feels very close to other other UI WordPress interfaces such as templates and pages management in the Site Editor.
So, I decided to go for it and vibe-coded Abilities Dashboard.
This tool is initially meant as an exploration tool — something to explore Abilities data directly in the browser and to show what’s possible with the DataViews component. In a way, it connects two areas of WordPress I’m really excited about right now: AI + Abilities, and the move toward DataViews-powered interfaces in the admin.
I also shared this prototype as an alternative approach in the discussion over at the WordPress AI experiments repo
If you’re curious about the Abilities API or just want to see DataViews in action, check it out: github.com/juanma-wp/abilities-dashboard
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