Look, I’ve been in this WordPress trenches for over 20 years. I built my first theme in Notepad++ when PHP 4 was still a thing. I’ve survived the shortcode apocalypse, the widget rewrite, the block editor civil war, and every flavor of “plugin conflict” you can imagine. I’ve debugged white screens at 3 a.m., hand-rolled custom fields before ACF existed, and written more register_post_type() calls than I care to count.
I used to think speed came from experience. Turns out — it comes from stopping and letting the AI do the boring parts.
The last few months I’ve been shipping prototypes that used to take me 2–3 weeks… in a single afternoon. Not because I’m suddenly a genius. Because I finally figured out how to talk to the AI like it’s a senior dev who actually listens.
The secret? It’s not the model. It’s not paying for the fancy tier. It’s having long, obsessive, borderline-insane conversations with the AI until the prompt stops being a vague wish list and turns into a battle-tested spec.
Here’s how it actually goes down (this is word-for-word how I do it):
Me: Alright, here’s the high-level idea I’ve been chewing on for weeks.
AI: Got it. But what happens when…
Me: Shit, good call. Here’s a list of every edge case I’ve seen in the wild over the last 15 years — pulled from real support tickets, Reddit threads, and my own nightmares.
AI: Yeah, these are common. People still complain about this stuff every day. Want to handle them like WooCommerce or CPT UI?
Me: Exactly. Now let’s build a prompt that covers the full file structure, follows WPCS, uses patterns from ACF and Health Check, includes debug helpers, security from day one, i18n, capability checks, the works.
AI: Here’s a first draft of the prompt. Read it. Tear it apart.
Me: Solid start — but add early exit guards, make sure it flushes rewrite rules on activation, handle multiple plugins without nuking the admin screen, and include a troubleshooting section in the dev guide.
AI: Updated prompt. Better?
Me: Now we’re cooking. Go build the whole thing. Root folder: my-plugin. Main file: my-plugin.php. Give me every file in full.
Then I sit back, sip coffee, and watch it spit out a working skeleton in minutes.
First run is never perfect — never is. But it’s 80–90% there. Then we iterate: tweak a hook timing, tighten a security check, add a debug flag, make sure everything cleans up on deactivation.
A few back-and-forths later? Prototype is live. Everything registers. Everything saves. Everything behaves like you’d expect from a real plugin.
All because I stopped treating the AI like a code vending machine and started treating it like a collaborator who’s willing to argue with me for an hour.
Here’s what 20 years in WordPress taught me about making AI actually useful:
- Talk like you’re pair-programming with someone who’s smart but doesn’t know your pain yet Don’t say “build me a plugin.” Say “here’s every edge case I’ve seen in 15 years — how would you prevent them?” Force it to think with you.
- Anchor it to real plugins it already knows “Use the class structure from WooCommerce.” “Make the settings page feel like Health Check.” “Handle fields native but inspired by ACF.” It pulls from those codebases instantly.
- Save every damn prompt version Version 1 is trash. Version 8 is gold. Watch the prompt evolve — that’s where the magic happens.
- Always include the boring security and best-practice boilerplate Early exit checks. Nonces. Capability checks. i18n hooks. Debug logs. File tree upfront. The AI never forgets when you list it.
- Embrace the ugly first version It’s not production code. It’s a skeleton you can hang real meat on. Then you refine, test, harden, document.
Bottom line: You don’t need to be a prompt ninja. You just need to be willing to talk to the AI like it owes you money — until the prompt is so tight it hurts.
Once that happens? You stop grinding code. You start conducting plugins.
And yeah — it feels like cheating. It feels unfair. It feels like you finally cracked the code while everyone else is still copy-pasting from Stack Overflow.
Good. That’s exactly how it should feel.
Now go open a chat. Throw your half-baked idea at it. Argue. Push back. Keep going until the prompt is bulletproof.
Then hit enter.
Watch it build.