ACF Chat Fridays give the Advanced Custom Fields community a chance to hear directly from the team behind the plugin. The August session focused on essential security updates, upcoming plugin enhancements like admin settings and AI-powered field suggestions, and a deep-dive conversation into how developers are using AI tools to streamline WordPress workflows.
Whether you are looking to secure your sites with the latest releases or curious about how agents, Model Context Protocol (MCP), and Cursor can speed up your custom field builds, this session was packed with practical insights for modern WordPress developers.
Hosted by Iain Poulson, Matt Shaw, Anthony Burchell, and Phil Johnston.
Sign up for the next session →
Session Recording
Watch the full session below or jump to the highlights in the summary.
Session Summary
Our discussion covered everything from crucial core and plugin patches to leveraging cutting-edge AI tools for field creation and local development. Key topics included:
- Critical Updates & Security: Recapping WordPress 7.0.3 and ACF 6.8.7 security releases.
- ACF 2026 Annual Survey: Why your feedback matters (plus a chance at a $150 gift card).
- New Settings Page Coming Soon: Bringing high-demand configuration toggles straight into the ACF admin UI.
- Smart Field Suggestions: A preview of AI-driven field generation inside the field group builder.
- Developer AI Workflows: Real-world usage of Cursor, Claude, MCP, and Figma Dev Mode.
- Working with Local JSON & AI: Bypassing MCP limitations by prompting agents to output JSON files.
- Community Q&A: Answering questions on front-end forms, email integrations, and custom post type creation.
Recent Releases: WP 7.0.3 & ACF 6.8.7
Before opening up the floor for Q&A, Iain emphasized the importance of keeping your environments updated following a series of security releases.
WordPress Core released version 7.0.3, a critical security patch that should be deployed across all your WordPress sites as soon as possible. On the plugin side, the team has released ACF and ACF PRO 6.8.7 (following 6.8.6), addressing several reported security issues.
While the disclosures were not severe, the ecosystem is seeing a dramatic rise in security reporting. Keeping both local and production environments running ACF 6.8.7 ensures your sites remain safe and fully supported. Check out the ACF Release Changelogs.
Shape the Future: The 2026 Annual Survey
The annual ACF User Survey is officially open! Taking roughly 10 minutes to complete, the survey helps the product team understand development trends across the WordPress landscape, agency workflows, and how developers are adopting AI tools.
By filling out the survey, participants can enter a draw to win a $150 gift card.
Fill out the 2026 ACF Annual Survey
What’s Coming to ACF: Admin Settings & Smart Field Suggestions
The team shared a preview of what is currently in active development for upcoming major releases of ACF:
In-Admin Settings Page
Instead of forcing developers to dig through documentation and write PHP hooks to toggle common plugin behaviors, ACF is introducing a dedicated Settings page within the ACF admin dashboard. This will surface essential plugin controls and give developers clear visibility over site configurations.
AI-Powered Smart Field Suggestions
Building out field groups with 20+ fields can require dozens of repetitive clicks. Coming to an upcoming major release, Smart Field Suggestions will use AI to evaluate your field group context and suggest full field layouts.
Instead of configuring every single field manually, you can review intelligent suggestions, accept them in bulk, and tweak the details as needed—saving massive amounts of manual setup time.
AI Workflows in the Wild: How the ACF Team & Community Build
A casual question from the audience sparked a broader discussion on how both the ACF team and community members use AI tools in their day-to-day work:
- Cursor & Claude Code: Anthony and Matt highlighted Cursor as their editor of choice for deep codebase work, noting how its $60 plan efficiently manages sub-agents and model selection. Claude Code and Opus excel at scaffolding brand-new plugins right from a blank workspace.
- Figma Dev Mode with MCP: Extracting design tokens manually is becoming a thing of the past. Using Figma’s Dev Mode alongside Model Context Protocol (MCP), AI models can ingest design files directly and convert layout, spacing, and typography into clean code.
- Deep Documentation Context: To get the best results when prompting AI to build ACF Blocks, developers recommend copying and pasting the official ACF Blocks v3 documentation directly into your prompt context to prevent models from defaulting to legacy v2 structures.
Overcoming Agent Limits with Local JSON
During the Q&A, attendee Marcel asked about creating or updating individual fields within an existing field group via MCP tools.
While direct field updates via MCP are still evolving, the team recommended leveraging Local JSON. Instead of interacting with the database through intermediate APIs, you can instruct AI agents (like Claude or Cursor) to generate or update raw ACF Local JSON files directly in your theme or plugin folder.
Sync your AI-generated JSON updates using WP-CLI
wp acf json sync
By pairing AI-generated JSON with the wp acf json sync
Quick Comparison: Popular Developer AI Tools
Here is how the team and community are leveraging popular AI solutions across different development tasks:
| Tool / Method | Best Used For | Why Developers Love It |
| Cursor Editor | Codebase navigation, CSS tweaking, PR reviews | Integrates directly into your editor with built-in sub-agent orchestration. |
| Claude (Opus / Code) | Scaffolding plugins, complex logic, scripting | Handles long context windows easily; great at reading full documentation pages. |
| Figma MCP | Design-to-code translation | Automates copying pixel values, font families, and color tokens straight into theme code. |
| Local JSON Prompting | Rapid field group generation | Bypasses UI limits by writing raw JSON files that sync cleanly via Git or WP-CLI. |
Resources & Links
- WordPress 7.0.3 Security Release Notes
- ACF 6.8.7 Release Notes
- ACF Local JSON Guide
- ACF Blocks v3 Documentation
- ACF Public Product Feedback Board
Our next ACF Chat Fridays session is scheduled for September 11, 2026. In the meantime, make sure to fill out our 2026 Annual Survey to help guide our upcoming product roadmap!
Register for the the next session of ACF Chat Fridays →
Tag or message us on X with suggestions or feedback using #ACFChatFridays.
For plugin support, please contact our support team directly, as comments aren't actively monitored.