Meet the Studio Assistant: Your Smart Companion for Building WordPress Sites Locally

By Antonio Sejas on October 29, 2024

Get ready to meet your new development best friend: the Studio Assistant.

The Studio Assistant is a smart chatbot integrated within Studio, our free and open source local development app, and it's now available for all Studio users to assist you in building WordPress sites effortlessly.

The Assistant leverages WordPress.com infrastructure and our WordPress knowledge base to provide helpful responses using Retrieval Augmented Generation, so you'll get tailored-to-WordPress responses every time.

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Your handy development companion

Building WordPress sites locally has never been easier. With the Studio Assistant, you can quickly configure new sites, manage existing sites, and run complex WP-CLI commands—all through a simple and intuitive chat interface.

Check out what the Assistant can do directly within the Studio app:

Why you'll love the Studio Assistant

There are many reasons to love the Studio Assistant, but here are just a few:

You can speak to the Assistant in any language, and it will respond in the same language, so that you can learn in the language that's best for you.
The Assistant gives you the ability to open site files with just one click, so you won't need to go digging in your site files manually.
The Assistant uses context about your specific site (like what themes and plugins are installed) to give you tailored responses and suggestions.

But seeing is believing, right? Here are some exciting use cases for the Assistant:

Ask and discover

Say you're looking for an SEO plugin but are unsure of your options. Ask the Assistant, and you'll get specific recommendations.

The Studio Assistant's response to 'what SEO plugin should I install?'

Code and content blocks written for you

When you ask the Assistant to write posts or code, it will provide you with Gutenberg blocks or code that you can simply copy and paste.

The Studio Assistant's response generating block code with a copy button

Tailored to your site

Moreover, the Studio Assistant is trained on WordPress-specific documentation and has access to a bunch of context about your site; therefore, it's able to respond with site-specific information and recommendations.

The Studio Assistant's response to 'what plugins do I have installed and what versions are they?'

WP-CLI commands with just one click

The Assistant is extra slick because you can run commands inline, removing the steps of installing WP-CLI and running commands in your terminal––simply click Run, and your recommended commands will be run for you:

The Studio Assistant's response to 'Update my WordPress version to 6.7-RC1'

Elevate your expertise

You'll also get a handy output about what the suggested commands do, helping you learn as you use the tool. This aligns with our desire to continue giving developers more ways to level-up their development skills and knowledge.

The Studio Assistant's response to 'how can I use the block bindings API?'

And if that isn't enough to convince you to incorporate the Studio Assistant into your development workflow, here's what Hoang Hxn said after he got early access to the feature:

After more than two months of using the Studio Assistant, it has become a great tutor that has helped me learn WordPress 100 times faster. I can ask questions in my native language, and the Studio Assistant can return Vietnamese results, in both complex terms and simple, easy-to-understand language for beginners like me.

In addition, I can execute CLI commands directly and quickly without knowing the technicalities, and I can create sample posts and pages quickly. I can also ask questions for beginners (like "what is the purpose of WordPress plugins?") without being afraid that they're "too beginner."

The Studio Assistant answers these basic questions quickly, accurately, and directly in the Studio app; it prevents me from having to go to forums and wait for my questions to be answered.

Ready to get started with the Studio Assistant?

We thought you might be.

Start leveraging Studio Assistant's powerful capabilities in just a few steps:

Download and install Studio––for free on Windows and Mac.
Login with your WordPress.com account (free or paid).
Create a new Studio site.
Click on the Assistant tab.
Start chatting.

Let us know what you think!

We're thrilled to finally share the Studio Assistant with you. We'd love to hear about some of the tasks you hope to automate with the Studio Assistant in the comments below.

As a reminder, Studio is a free, open source tool, so we welcome any and all feedback in GitHub. Explore other Issues and create your own here.

You can also explore the Studio documentation for more tips on using the Assistant.

Download Studio for free