Abilities API

Expose your community to AI agents and automation through the WordPress Abilities API - 19 free abilities plus 20 more with Pro, each enforcing the same permissions as the REST API.

What You Will Learn

What the Abilities API is and when to use it instead of REST
Every ability Jetonomy and Jetonomy Pro register
How permissions work (they mirror REST exactly)
How to execute an ability from PHP or WP-CLI

What Is the Abilities API?

The WordPress Abilities API is a machine-readable registry of "things a site can do", each with a name, description, JSON-Schema input/output contracts, and a permission callback. AI agents, MCP servers, and automation tools discover abilities at runtime and call them without knowing your REST routes.

Where the API comes from: the Abilities API ships in WordPress core from version 7.0 onward. On earlier versions (6.7-6.9) it is available as the standalone WordPress Abilities API feature plugin - install and activate that plugin and the API works the same way.

Jetonomy registers its abilities only when the API is actually present. It hooks the API's own wp_abilities_api_init / wp_abilities_api_categories_init actions, which fire whether the API came from core (7.0+) or from the feature plugin on an older release. If neither core nor the plugin provides the API, those hooks never fire and Jetonomy simply does not register abilities - no errors, no changed behaviour, and the REST API remains the way to drive the community.

Free Abilities

All free abilities live under the jetonomy/ namespace, grouped into categories (jetonomy-content, jetonomy-spaces, jetonomy-users, jetonomy-moderation, jetonomy-search).

Ability	What it does
`jetonomy/list-spaces`, `jetonomy/get-space`	Browse spaces
`jetonomy/create-space`, `jetonomy/join-space`, `jetonomy/list-space-members`	Space membership
`jetonomy/list-posts`, `jetonomy/get-post`, `jetonomy/create-post`	Topics
`jetonomy/list-replies`, `jetonomy/create-reply`	Replies
`jetonomy/vote`	Vote on posts and replies
`jetonomy/search`	Full-text search
`jetonomy/get-activity`, `jetonomy/get-user-profile`	Member data
`jetonomy/list-notifications`, `jetonomy/mark-notifications-read`	Notifications
`jetonomy/flag-content`, `jetonomy/list-flags`, `jetonomy/moderate-content`	Moderation

Pro Abilities

Pro adds 20 abilities under jetonomy-pro/ covering its extensions:

Area	Abilities
Messaging	`list-conversations`, `get-conversation`, `send-message`
Polls	`create-poll`, `vote-poll`, `get-poll-results`
Reactions	`get-reactions`, `add-reaction`
Badges	`list-badges`, `get-user-badges`, `award-badge`
Custom fields	`list-custom-fields`, `set-custom-field`
Analytics	`get-analytics`, `export-analytics`
Webhooks	`list-webhooks`, `create-webhook`, `delete-webhook`
Moderation rules	`list-moderation-rules`, `create-moderation-rule`

Permissions Mirror REST

Every ability executes through the same REST stack that powers the frontend (improved in 1.5.0 - abilities previously used a separate code path). That means the permission model is identical: an agent acting as a subscriber cannot read someone else's conversation, list webhooks, or award badges, and gets the same jetonomy_forbidden / rest_forbidden errors the REST API returns. There is no separate "abilities permission system" to audit.

Executing an Ability

From PHP:

$ability = wp_get_ability( 'jetonomy/create-post' );
if ( $ability ) {
    $result = $ability->execute( [
        'space_id' => 8,
        'title'    => 'Posted by an agent',
        'content'  => 'Hello from the Abilities API.',
    ] );
}

Abilities that take no input are executed with no arguments: wp_get_ability( 'jetonomy/list-spaces' )->execute().

From WP-CLI (WordPress 7.0+):

wp ability run jetonomy/search --input='{"q":"onboarding"}'

What's Next?

The same operations are available over plain HTTP if you prefer direct REST calls.

REST API →