A new WordPress proposal seeks to integrate a new custom knowledge post type directly into WordPress Core. The new feature, already present in Gutenberg, functions as a centralized repository of guidelines and knowledge on a website for use by people such as editors and contributors, as well as internal agents and AI tools. The proposal was quickly rejected by developers, who generally felt the feature was disconnected from what users actually needed.
What is a custom post type (CPT)?
Currently in WordPress, there are two types of post types:
- Messages
- and Pages.
WordPress can also be extended with Custom Post Type (CPT) plugins that allow site owners to create new custom post types for a specific purpose. For example, the WooCommerce plugin uses a custom post type called “product” that allows merchants to manage products.
Proposal to merge a knowledge publication type
The knowledge custom post type was offered in February 2026 and a month later it was integrated into the Gutenberg plugin as an experimental feature for the following knowledge types:
“Site: the goals, personality, target audience and industry of your site. Fundamental context to which any tool or contributor can refer.
Copy – Tone, voice, brand personality and vocabulary preferences. An editorial style guide, alive in WordPress.
Images — Favorite image styles, colors, moods, and subjects to include or avoid.
Blocks — Rules by block type for content blocks. For example, specify that Paragraph blocks should favor short sentences, or that Image blocks should always include descriptive alt text.
Additional — Everything else: accessibility requirements, linking practices, formatting conventions, or rules that don’t fit into the categories above.
WordPress fuels confusion over who the new feature is for
WordPress intends to merge the Knowledge Custom Post Type (CPT) into the core so that everyone working on a website, including humans, AI agents, tools, and plugins, can access the website’s guidelines.
But this proposal meets resistance for several reasons. One of them is that the proposal presents the new functionality as being used by humans and AI, but the GitHub repository as the feature clearly positions it as only intended for use by AI:
“CPT Guidelines store site-wide editorial rules: brand voice, copy standards, image guidelines. This is one type of educational content that a site needs, but not the only one.
As AI-based tools integrate with WordPress, a recurring need arises for sites to store different types of persistent, structured knowledge that shapes how agents interact with the site. “
Usefulness and usefulness to humans are not mentioned once on this page. There is a gap between the public proposal description and the actual technical specification. This calls into question whether anyone within the core really knows who or what the new feature is for and how it will be used.
This is just one of six reasons cited by developers as to why the proposal seems ill-advised and unnecessary.
Resistance to the proposal
The proposal was met with resistance from members of the WordPress developer community in the private Facebook group Dynamic WordPress (must join to read the discussion)with 29 comments mostly opposed to the proposal to merge this functionality into core.
There were six reasons why developers were against the proposal:
- This should be a plugin, not a core feature.
- Core contains enough; functionality will only add bloat.
- There are higher priorities, with native multilingual unanimously cited as the most important missing feature.
- Doubts were expressed as to whether the proposal had been fully considered.
- Many have suggested that this is not a user-facing feature; it’s for AI.
- A few have suggested that this feature benefits Automattic business users on WordPress.com more than the average WordPress user.
Resistance to the proposal to merge the function into the core was not limited to social media, ad on WordPress itself has raised questions about the need for a central function.
Commenter mrwweb shared:
“I know it says this feature is provided for both ‘author-facing and agent-facing’ apps, but it seems like AI/LLM is leading the design of the feature.
Additionally, the underlying assumption that “most sites already have content standards” doesn’t seem accurate to me. This is a very real need and use case, but I’m not sure it’s one that would justify a new core feature on its own.
…I think this feature has a lot of promise, but I also wonder if it requires a broader perspective that takes into account a fuller range of use cases, especially for humans.
Namith Jawahar commented:
“This seems like unnecessary overreach. Better to let developers decide for individual sites rather than forcing one post type on everyone.”
Aaron Jorbin expressed the opinion that this seems like a good feature but feels incomplete at the moment.
“As is, it feels incomplete. I think it lays the groundwork and with time remaining before 7.1, I think it could become a great addition.”
Second time a new feature is questioned
This is the second time in version 7 of WordPress that a new feature has been heavily questioned. Version 7.0 saw developers question the need for real-time collaboration (RTC), which was supposed to be the focus of Phase 3 collaboration.
Featured image by Shutterstock/MNStudio
