ACF Chat Fridays serve as a monthly gathering point for the Advanced Custom Fields community, offering an open platform where users, developers, and the ACF team converge to explore the plugin’s ecosystem. The first session of 2026 took place on January 9th and featured a live demo of the newly released ACF 6.8 Beta 1, showcasing its integration with the WordPress Abilities API.

Hosted by Iain Poulson, Phil Johnston, Anthony Burchell, Matt Shaw and April Neal.

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Session Recording

Watch the full session below or skip to the highlights in the session summary.

Session Summary

Iain Poulson opened the session by welcoming the community back for the new year and recapping the release of ACF 6.7 in early December. While that release focused on inline editing for ACF Blocks, the team used this session to shift focus toward the first beta release for ACF PRO 6.8, centered around the WordPress Abilities API.

Phil Johnston led a demo explaining that the Abilities API is a foundational core API introduced in WordPress 6.9, designed to allow site data and tools to be exposed to external agents in a standardized, secure way. Phil clarified that this is not a “magic AI button” built into ACF, but rather the essential plumbing that allows structured ACF data to be discoverable and interoperable for automation tools and agentic AI.

Using an estate agent website as a test case, Phil demonstrated how an agent like Claude Code can connect to WordPress via the MCP adapter plugin. He showed the AI inspecting an empty WordPress site to discover its capabilities before automatically generating a complete content model. This included the registration of a “Properties” custom post type, relevant taxonomies for regions and property types, and a “Property Details” field group containing prices, bedrooms, and image galleries.

The session also highlighted how these tools can assist with data seeding and audits. Phil demonstrated the AI populating the newly created model with realistic test listings and suggested that agents could eventually assist with bulk operations like normalization or finding products missing specific metadata. To ensure security, these abilities are strictly opt-in, requiring developers to enable a specific filter to turn on the AI registration.

Q&A

Questions and answers from the session may have been edited for clarity.

Q: Does the AI know how to build ACF blocks yet?

A: Currently, the Beta 1 abilities are focused on the content model, such as field groups, post types, and taxonomies. While AI can help place existing blocks into content, the scaffolding of new ACF blocks and their templates is a potential area for future improvement after the 6.8 release.

Q: Are there improvements coming for performance in the Flexible Content field?

A: Yes, the team is prioritizing performance for users with complex Flexible Content layouts. They are researching ways to streamline the admin experience when editing pages with large amounts of layouts to make the interface faster and more responsive.

Q: Can this be used with an AI chatbot to help visitors find content on a site?

A: This is entirely possible, especially by using the Abilities API to consume backend content models like documentation. Additionally, tools like WP Engine Smart Search already provide semantic search capabilities that understand user intent even with typos, which can power effective chatbot experiences.

Resources & Links

Coming Up on ACF Chat Fridays

Register today for the next session of ACF Chat Fridays. Sessions are typically held on the first Friday of every month. Questions and suggestions for the development team are always welcome.

Register for the next session of ACF Chat Fridays here: https://wpeng.in/acf-chat-fridays/

The list of upcoming sessions is below.

  • February 6, 2026
  • March 6, 2026
  • April 10, 2026
  • May 8, 2026

Tag or DM us on X (formerly Twitter) with suggestions or feedback using #ACFChatFridays.