Plugin Management Abilities

Gratis AI Agent v1.5.0 ships with 7 plugin management abilities that the AI assistant can invoke during a conversation. These abilities provide programmatic control over WordPress plugins installed through the Plugin Builder & Sandbox System.

Abilities Overview

Ability	Slug	Description
List Plugins	list_plugins	Returns a list of plugins in the sandbox store with their status.
Get Plugin	get_plugin	Retrieves metadata and source code for a specific plugin by slug.
Create Plugin	create_plugin	Generates a new plugin from a description and stores it in the sandbox.
Update Plugin	update_plugin	Replaces a plugin's source code with a new version.
Delete Plugin	delete_plugin	Removes a plugin from the sandbox store. Deactivates first.
Install Plugin	install_plugin	Deploys a sandboxed plugin to the live WordPress plugin directory.
Activate Plugin	activate_plugin	Activates a sandboxed plugin in the wp-env sandbox environment.

Plugin Installer API

The plugin installer handles file system operations when deploying or removing plugins. Key behaviours:

• Path validation: All plugin paths are validated against the allowed plugin directory before any file write. Directory traversal attempts are rejected.
• Multi-file install: A plugin may consist of multiple files. The installer creates the plugin directory and writes all files atomically.
• Update: Replaces existing plugin files. Deactivates the plugin before writing to avoid partial-state errors.
• Delete by slug: Locates the plugin directory by slug, deactivates across all sites, then removes the directory.

Registering a Custom Install Handler

You can hook into the install lifecycle using the gratis_ai_plugin_installer_before_install and gratis_ai_plugin_installer_after_install actions:

add_action('gratis_ai_plugin_installer_before_install', function(string $slug, array $files): void {
    // $slug: the plugin's directory name
    // $files: associative array of relative path => file content
    error_log("Installing plugin: {$slug} with " . count($files) . " files.");
}, 10, 2);

add_action('gratis_ai_plugin_installer_after_install', function(string $slug, bool $success): void {
    if ($success) {
        error_log("Plugin {$slug} installed successfully.");
    }
}, 10, 2);

Ecosystem Registry

Abilities are registered through the plugin ecosystem registry. The registry maps ability slugs to their handler classes and exposes them to the AI agent's tool dispatcher.

To register a custom plugin management ability:

add_filter('gratis_ai_plugin_abilities', function(array $abilities): array {
    $abilities['my_custom_ability'] = [
        'class'       => My_Custom_Plugin_Ability::class,
        'label'       => 'My Custom Ability',
        'description' => 'Does something useful with plugins.',
    ];
    return $abilities;
});

Your ability class must implement the Gratis_AI_Ability_Interface:

class My_Custom_Plugin_Ability implements Gratis_AI_Ability_Interface {

    public function get_slug(): string {
        return 'my_custom_ability';
    }

    public function get_schema(): array {
        return [
            'name'        => 'my_custom_ability',
            'description' => 'Does something useful with plugins.',
            'parameters'  => [
                'type'       => 'object',
                'properties' => [
                    'slug' => [
                        'type'        => 'string',
                        'description' => 'The plugin slug to operate on.',
                    ],
                ],
                'required' => ['slug'],
            ],
        ];
    }

    public function execute(array $params): array {
        $slug = sanitize_key($params['slug'] ?? '');
        // ... your implementation ...
        return ['success' => true, 'slug' => $slug];
    }
}

HookScanner Integration

The create_plugin and update_plugin abilities automatically run the HookScanner against newly generated code. HookScanner returns a list of WordPress action and filter hooks registered by the plugin.

To retrieve HookScanner results programmatically:

$scanner = new Gratis_AI_Hook_Scanner();
$hooks   = $scanner->scan_plugin_slug('my-generated-plugin');

foreach ($hooks['actions'] as $hook) {
    echo "Action: {$hook['hook']} — callback: {$hook['callback']}\n";
}

foreach ($hooks['filters'] as $hook) {
    echo "Filter: {$hook['hook']} — callback: {$hook['callback']}\n";
}

HookScanner skips vendor/ and node_modules/ directories automatically.

Async Job Architecture

Long-running plugin operations (generate, install) are dispatched as async jobs with live progress tracking. The AI chat interface polls for progress and streams status updates to the user:

1. Dispatch — the ability creates an async job and returns a job ID.
2. Poll — the agent polls gratis_ai_job_status($job_id) every 2 seconds.
3. Stream — intermediate progress messages are pushed to the chat thread.
4. Complete — the final result (success or error) is returned and displayed.

To hook into job lifecycle events:

add_action('gratis_ai_job_started', function(string $job_id, string $ability_slug): void {
    error_log("Job {$job_id} started for ability: {$ability_slug}");
}, 10, 2);

add_action('gratis_ai_job_completed', function(string $job_id, array $result): void {
    error_log("Job {$job_id} completed. Success: " . ($result['success'] ? 'yes' : 'no'));
}, 10, 2);