Build with Your Expert WordPress Agent: WordPress Studio’s New Desktop Experience Is in Beta

By Jonathan Bossenger on August 24, 2026

At WordCamp US last week, we unveiled a completely reimagined WordPress Studio desktop app, rebuilt from the ground up around Studio Code, our AI WordPress expert.

With this new Studio desktop experience, you can describe what you want to the expert WordPress agent, watch it come together in a live preview, point at anything that’s off, and ship it to production when it’s ready, all in one window.

You’re left with a full WordPress build you own and can maintain, not throwaway code.

Today, it’s available in beta for everyone to try.

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How to access the beta and what to expect

You can try this new desktop UI in just four steps:

Download the WordPress Studio desktop app on macOS, Windows, or Linux
Sign in with your WordPress.com account
Enable the New Studio Experience option under Studio → Beta Features
Add a payment method on file to verify you’re a real account (you won’t be charged)

And if you’re a brand-new Studio user — welcome! You’ll see the new agentic UI as default, so there’s no need to opt into the beta.

The Studio interface has been reimagined to focus on agentic development, with three panels next to each other in a single window:

Your Sites on the left
A chat with Studio Code in the middle
A live preview of your site on the right

A screenshot of the WordPress Studio agentic UI with sites on the left, a chat in the middle, and a site preview on the right

Switch on the new UI without losing a thing

If you’re an existing Studio user, you won’t lose your current sites when you switch the new experience on; every local site from the old experience carries over automatically. Nothing to migrate, re-import, or rebuild.

Pick a site to jump back into it, start or stop it, or open its settings.

An arrow pointing to the site list in WordPress Studio desktop app

Chat with Studio Code to make it happen

The agent in the middle panel is Studio Code, our coding agent built for WordPress that knows blocks, themes, and WP-CLI natively.

In fact, this is what WordPress developer Olivier Gobet said about his experience building with Studio Code:

I’ve been building WordPress sites for almost 20 years, and Studio Code has genuinely changed the way I work. For the first time in a long while, I feel like I’m no longer limited by the technical barriers of implementation. Instead of asking myself, “Is this possible?“, I can focus on, “What do I want to build?”

You describe what you want in plain language, and Studio Code builds it on a real local WordPress install where you can build, vibe, and experiment. Chat history is stored so you can easily stop and restart a work in progress, and you can always spin up a new chat for each site when you want to start fresh:

A screenshot of the WordPress Studio agentic UI with sites on the left, an arrow pointing to the chat in the middle, and a site preview on the right

If you want to give Studio Code standing instructions it follows on every task, set them under Settings → AI.

That same screen is where you can also toggle agentic features off entirely if you’d rather build WordPress the classic way.

The 'turn off agentic features' toggle in the WordPress Studio settings

Watch it build in real time

Changes render live in the in-app preview as Studio Code works. You see the site take shape with every ask, so there’s no switching between browser and UI to check whether an edit landed.

It’s a working preview of your local site, too: click any link to move to other pages, just as a visitor would, and watch them update as Studio Code makes changes. You can even access the admin dashboard to manage posts, pages, products, and everything else you’re used to.

A screenshot of the WordPress Studio agentic UI with sites on the left, the chat in the middle, and an arrow pointing to a site preview on the right

One of your favorite tools is still available, too, just in a different spot. Use the Annotate button to send specific, targeted requests to Studio Code.

A screenshot of the WordPress Studio agentic UI with sites on the left, the chat in the middle, and an arrow pointing to the annotation button on the site preview on the right

Click the elements you want changed, stack up your notes, submit them with one click, and Studio Code makes every edit in one pass. It’s the client-feedback loop, built into the tool, and it’s a natural fit for your workflow of reviewing, marking up, and revising a site fast.

Build locally, ship when you’re ready

The core functionality of Studio remains too: you’re able to spin up a real, local WordPress site in seconds by clicking the + button in the toolbar.

Because everything you build happens locally, you can try things, break things, and start over with zero risk to a live site. Nothing goes live until you say so.

When it’s ready, you ship to fast, managed hosting on a paid WordPress.com or Pressable plan in a few clicks with Studio Sync.

A screenshot of the WordPress Studio agentic UI with sites on the left, site settings, and the site preview on the right with an arrow pointing to the sync functionality

What you build in Studio is real WordPress: portable, dependable and yours to maintain.

Meet the new WordPress Studio

Give the new Studio desktop beta a real workout. Point it at an actual project, a brief, some images, a vibe, and see how far it gets, where it shines, and where it falls short.

During this beta period, you’ll get a one-time credit gift from us to try it out. Once you hit your limit, top-ups are available for just $10.

And we want to know how it goes. Open a GitHub issue with your feedback, bug reports, and ideas. Your input shapes what comes next.