Good news for WordPress developers working on building plugins, themes, blocks, or full sites locally: Every WordPress Studio site is faster. Just open the Studio app to feel the difference.…

WordPress Studio Just Got Faster, the CLI is Now Dependency-Free, and Sonnet 5 is Supported

By Fredrik Rombach Ekelund on July 13, 2026

Good news for WordPress developers working on building plugins, themes, blocks, or full sites locally:

Every WordPress Studio site is faster. Just open the Studio app to feel the difference.
If you’ve been curious about the Studio CLI but didn’t want to install Node.js just to try it, you’re in luck. We’ve updated the install command to one dependency-free line. Run it in your terminal, and you’re in.
Studio Code is now running Anthropic’s most agentic Sonnet model by default.

As a reminder, WordPress Studio is our agentic local development tool for developers. It’s free, open source, and improving every month.

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A faster building experience

Page loads are now 30–50% faster, and your local Studio sites use less than a third of the memory than they did before. You’ll notice it most on sites carrying a lot of plugins, exactly where things used to feel slower.

That speed comes from a new default Native PHP runtime that runs your site with fewer abstractions.

The WordPress Studio site setting modal window showing Native and Sandbox PHP runtime options

If you’d rather keep a site’s code strictly contained — say, you’re testing an untrusted third-party plugin or theme — you can switch that site to the Sandbox runtime option anytime under Site Settings → Edit site → PHP runtime. Sandbox, which is powered by WordPress Playground, keeps a site’s code from running other programs on your machine or reaching outside its own folder.

This faster runtime is live now for all Studio users on version 1.12.0 or later. Check to see if your existing Studio sites are automatically running this new Native runtime under Site Settings → Edit site → PHP runtime.

Try the Studio CLI without touching npm

We’ve also made Studio CLI better and easier to use. Studio CLI now installs with a single, dependency-free command. No need to install Node.js and npm first. Just run the right command for your operating system in your terminal to install:

# macOS and Linux
curl -fsSL https://wordpress.studio/install.sh | bash

# Windows
irm https://wordpress.studio/install.ps1 | iex

Once installed, you get the full power of Studio from your terminal: manage and create local sites, push and pull sites, run WP-CLI commands, push to production or staging, and tap into Studio Code, the purpose-built AI coding agent for WordPress.

And if you’ve already installed Studio CLI via the npm command, don’t worry. It’s still available and will keep receiving updates.

Sonnet 5 is Studio Code’s new default model

Speaking of Studio Code, it now runs Anthropic’s Claude Sonnet 5 model by default. That means it’s better at multi-step, hands-on work: tracing a bug across several files, reading your logs, reasoning about your theme and plugin code, and carrying out a fix rather than just describing one.

The Studio desktop app open to the Studio Code area

Because Studio Code works directly inside your local Studio environment, it has the full context of your site. Point it at something that’s broken and it can check the logs, find the relevant code, explain what’s going wrong, and propose a change you can review before applying. Or start from scratch: build a plugin, create a custom block, spin up a custom post type, or tweak your theme all in plain language.

The available models for Studio Code in a terminal window

You don’t need to change anything to use Sonnet 5; it’s already the default model in Studio Code if you’re on Studio 1.14.0 or later. That said, you can always change to any supported model by selecting it in the drop-down menu in the desktop app or running the /model command in your terminal.

Try it today

Update to Studio 1.12.0 or later to automatically start using the faster Native PHP runtime, and learn more about the CLI in the docs. Plus, give Sonnet 5 a spin in Studio Code during your next build.

There’s plenty more coming to WordPress Studio over the next few weeks and months. Keep an eye on our release notes, and tell us what you think on GitHub.