I started working on a very simple TUI for WordPress this weekend. By “I started working” I mean I used Claude Code and Compound Engineering to build out a prototype. So far it can create new posts and pages, add images, and use most of the default blocks built into Core WordPress. It’s meant to work with self-hosted or close to self-hosted out of the box. So if you have a site running on a Raspberry Pi in your basement, a self-hosted site on Digital Ocean, BlueHost, pressable or something really robust like a WP VIP, this is designed to work for you. All you need is an application password for your user and you’re set.
I’ve been really interested in TUIs for a while now, and am always on the lookout for a local editor for WordPress that could (in theory) run on any device and let me write up a quick post without a lot of UI distractions. I’m still testing things out to make sure the prototype is useable before I push it to GitHub. It’ll live there eventually.
I’ve worked with compound engineering a little at work to prototype things for customers or help me with market research, and other things. Jake introduced me to it. This is the first time I’ve used it to build a product I might want to use myself or open source to others. It’s an impressive set of skills. If you haven’t tried it yet, it’s streets ahead of the built in plan skill for Claude Code (and I imagine for Codex etc as well). It works a lot harder, burns a lot more tokens, but I generally end up with something that has fewer security issuses and better resembles what I actually wanted to build. Security in particular, has specific steps in planning, debugging, and buildin to take an adversarial perspective on the task at hand. To that end, it’s a useful tool and a good demonstration of just how hard it is to produce software that’s good and secure, even with AI.
If you have a Max plan, or equivalent, you’ll probably still never hit your limit unless you’re doing something wild. The lower plans may bump up to the limits with CE, but in the long run, it’s worth it.