WP Plugin Insight  🔗 **Source:** [WP Plugin Insight](https://share.snipd.com/episode/0bdd2135-6797-4ea3-9d35-0a8982bd789e) ## Highlights - **Hackathon Seed Led To WP Plugin Insights** - Javier and Mark started WP Plugin Insights from a hackathon conversation where plugin review ideas came up over beers. - The seed idea was to use AI to aggregate plugin code and metadata to better explain what plugins actually do. Transcript: Javier Casares And now we are here trying to explain that so mark i'm mark aina i'm from the netherlands i work for a company called gemf and also have my own company called code kitchen um yeah so what Mark Heijnen Javier explains so last year we did a hackathon together he was code lead i was in his team and in the evening sessions um you start about thinking about other ids and plug-in uh review Came to mind and we had a pretty open discussion with some beers and we discussed like what um possibilities ai but also randomly like okay what are developers expecting from a plugin Review or end users from okay i need to select a plugin. How can I do it the best it works for them? Because the plugin pages on WordPress already gives a lot of information, but the search is still pretty limited in how they can do their work. Javier Casares Yeah, also, we don't know really. You can read the readme.txt, the information in the WordPress pages, but we don't really know what a plugin does. So it was like, maybe we can play with the AI to send everything there and ask questions, like who is the best developer, who is the worst developer, these kind of things, it was a joke. But that conversation was the seed for the project this year. It's called WP Plugin Insights. And as the name, it's very obvious, but then as the name says, we try to take different things from the plugin code, basically. ([Time 0:01:10](https://share.snipd.com/snip/d809c4f9-2943-46ef-98f4-29fb05e1ec5b)) - **AI Reveals How Plugins Actually Behave** - WP Plugin Insights analyzes plugin code and metadata to surface compatibility, security, and translation signals. - They check things like multi-site compatibility, external network calls, and translatable strings to show what a plugin actually does. Transcript: Javier Casares It's called WP Plugin Insights. And as the name, it's very obvious, but then as the name says, we try to take different things from the plugin code, basically. So we are focusing now on compatibility and security, translations. And we have a lot of ideas. Like, I don't know if the plugin is WordPress multi-site compatible in some way, or I don't know if those calls to outside the WordPress, sending information, I don't know. Is to try to understand what the plugin does and show information easily to the user so they can decide to use the plugin or not. Mark Heijnen Yeah, so it's a lot of validating what the developer claims. So for example, is the PHP version minimum correct, WordPress correct, maybe translation show how good his community does because you can't say that to the developer right like it's All about the community around it if they translate his plugin or not and then it's basically trying to create as much additional information about that plugin is what we can do so for Translations yeah reading Globpress, translate to WordPress.org. Then also check the plugin, see if all the translatable strings are there, maybe if the translatable strings are not in English. ([Time 0:02:41](https://share.snipd.com/snip/a5b118e7-fc18-4e1a-ae15-6cbf18218c6a)) - **Objective Signals Beat Developer Claims** - The project aims to validate developer claims by checking declared PHP/WordPress version requirements and translation quality. - This provides objective signals beyond developer-written descriptions on WordPress.org. Transcript: Mark Heijnen Yeah, so it's a lot of validating what the developer claims. So for example, is the PHP version minimum correct, WordPress correct, maybe translation show how good his community does because you can't say that to the developer right like it's All about the community around it if they translate his plugin or not and then it's basically trying to create as much additional information about that plugin is what we can do so for Translations yeah reading Globpress, translate to WordPress.org. Then also check the plugin, see if all the translatable strings are there, maybe if the translatable strings are not in English. So try to give a little bit more insights than they would get from WordPress.org itself because that's developer content. Like they can say it's the best plugin, it's the number one, it's the best form builder. We don't make any request outside but you don't know and sometimes that little bit of insight is nice to have like if you have a payment gateway sure it needs to make online requests but If it's a form builder why would it maybe it's for maybe how to update but if it's on web at dark that's all that logic already in place so it's trying to find uh useful insights around that Plugin and also maybe uh want to build a better um plugin repository where they can actually search uh on specific things like maybe i only want to see plugins in the language Dutch or In Spanish and then get only those results back because if you could now go to nl.wordpress for example, it's basically the same view, except it's translated. ([Time 0:03:44](https://share.snipd.com/snip/ddd375f0-37e8-40ef-b4bf-3c0b988fb9a0)) - **Build Language Filters For Plugin Discovery** - Offer users faceted search like language filtering so they can find plugins with active translations in Dutch or Spanish. - Mark suggests returning results limited to specific languages or warning users when translations are lacking. Transcript: Mark Heijnen Then also check the plugin, see if all the translatable strings are there, maybe if the translatable strings are not in English. So try to give a little bit more insights than they would get from WordPress.org itself because that's developer content. Like they can say it's the best plugin, it's the number one, it's the best form builder. We don't make any request outside but you don't know and sometimes that little bit of insight is nice to have like if you have a payment gateway sure it needs to make online requests but If it's a form builder why would it maybe it's for maybe how to update but if it's on web at dark that's all that logic already in place so it's trying to find uh useful insights around that Plugin and also maybe uh want to build a better um plugin repository where they can actually search uh on specific things like maybe i only want to see plugins in the language Dutch or In Spanish and then get only those results back because if you could now go to nl.wordpress for example, it's basically the same view, except it's translated. Though it already knows the context, like, okay, I only want to maybe see those plugins or I believe it shows you a warning, but then you're already one step further in. ([Time 0:04:16](https://share.snipd.com/snip/80b973e1-c105-459b-b904-7d4e9e95f328)) - **Mid Sized Team Hit Sweet Spot** - The team size of seven felt balanced: large enough for progress but small enough to stay nimble. - Javier notes previous experiences ranging from two to fifteen people informed choosing a mid-sized team. Transcript: Javier Casares I had some questions in my mind this morning about if we could do everything we wanted. But I think we are on the right path. Also, we have our team. We are seven, I think. So it's not a big team, but it's not so small. So years ago, we were two, and I've seen teams for 15, I think. So we are in the middle. So I think it's the right size. And also we've been working in some ways with other teams, talking with ideas. Some people came here. We can use your project for some things. ([Time 0:05:51](https://share.snipd.com/snip/ddfd91f3-b922-4baf-94d5-e72beb29ec3e)) - **Collaboration With Other Hackathon Teams** - Other hackathon teams produced tools like AI plugin builders and best-practice scripts that WP Plugin Insights can integrate with. - Javier and Mark are exploring using their service to validate AI-generated plugins for correctness. Transcript: Mark Heijnen They're now going to work around Type 3, but they also have already created a lot of best scripts. So, that's for us a lot of valuable insights see what they're doing maybe get some ideas and then another team that basically builds an AI to build WordPress plugin they're like okay Can we use your service um to get valuable feedback if the AI's job is doing correctly um so if you're a decent enough developer maybe you don't need it but if you're like a beginner or just A user and i would just want i want to build a plugin with the ai that it's there's still a system around that that validates if the ai does it because that user might not be able to themselves Or it's more tricky depending on what they try to which plugin they try to build them. ([Time 0:06:50](https://share.snipd.com/snip/6be6eb61-c9e1-4fb9-a047-a51ff88f6c8e))