For twenty years a WordPress developer’s value was the ability to write the code: the hooks, the queries, the block markup, the escaping you did from memory. AI collapsed the cost of writing that code to almost nothing. So here’s the uncomfortable question: what are you still good for?<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The numbers give an uncomfortable answer too. Developers have never used AI more, and never trusted it less: adoption is up, trust is down, and the most experienced developers are the most sceptical of all. WordPress vulnerabilities rose 42% in a year, 91% of them in plugins, with vibe-coded code named as a driver. Agencies say their single biggest worry is no longer speed, but the quality of what the machine produces.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The scarce skill in 2026 isn’t prompting. It’s everything wrapped around the generation: the context you give the agent, the spec you hold it to, the harness that catches it, and the call only you can make.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
This talk is about those four, for WordPress specifically, including what AI gets confidently wrong here every single time: missing nonces, absent capability checks, unescaped output, invented hooks, block markup that validates but renders wrong.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
You’ll leave with a working discipline, not another tool to install.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
For twenty years a WordPress developer’s value was the ability to write the code: the hooks, the queries, the block markup, the escaping you did from memory. AI collapsed the cost of writing that code to almost nothing. So here’s the uncomfortable question: what are you still good for? The numbers give an uncomfortable answer […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":15405089,"featured_media":0,"template":"single-item-session-en","meta":{"_wcpt_session_time":1789816800,"_wcpt_session_duration":2400,"_wcpt_session_type":"session","_wcpt_session_slides":"","_wcpt_session_video":"","_wcpt_speaker_id":[1946],"footnotes":""},"session_track":[41],"session_category":[40],"class_list":["post-1405","wcb_session","type-wcb_session","status-publish","hentry","wcb_track-talks","wcb_session_category-english"],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/pgXYN8-mF","session_date_time":{"date":"September 19, 2026","time":"1:20 pm"},"session_speakers":[{"id":"1946","slug":"marcel-schmitz-en","name":"Marcel Schmitz –","link":"https:\/\/belgrade.wordcamp.org\/2026\/speaker\/marcel-schmitz-en\/"}],"session_cats_rendered":"English","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/belgrade.wordcamp.org\/2026\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/sessions\/1405","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/belgrade.wordcamp.org\/2026\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/sessions"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/belgrade.wordcamp.org\/2026\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/wcb_session"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/belgrade.wordcamp.org\/2026\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/sessions\/1405\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2472,"href":"https:\/\/belgrade.wordcamp.org\/2026\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/sessions\/1405\/revisions\/2472"}],"speakers":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/belgrade.wordcamp.org\/2026\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/speakers\/1946"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/belgrade.wordcamp.org\/2026\/wp-json\/wporg\/v1\/users\/schmitzoide"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/belgrade.wordcamp.org\/2026\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1405"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"wcb_track","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/belgrade.wordcamp.org\/2026\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/session_track?post=1405"},{"taxonomy":"wcb_session_category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/belgrade.wordcamp.org\/2026\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/session_category?post=1405"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}