WordPress 6.9 Gene Puts AI On A Leash And Speeds Up The Front End

WordPress 6.9 shipped on December 2, 2025, and it reads like a release written by people who got tired of chasing feedback across chat apps. Notes brings block by block collaboration straight into the editor, while the Command Palette expands across wp admin so power users can move faster with fewer clicks. The headline message is clear. WordPress wants smoother teamwork now and more automation later.

Notes works like inline review, but for blocks. Teammates can leave threaded comments right where the layout or copy actually lives, then resolve them when the work is done. Authors also get email notifications when a note lands, which is the difference between “nice feature” and “this will actually ship content.”

For the AI crowd, WordPress is keeping the hype contained. The official AI Experiments plugin is positioned as a test lab inside wp admin and the editor, with opt in experiments that you trigger manually. The first public experiment is Title Generation. Setup is straightforward: install the plugin, add a provider key under Settings to AI Credentials, then enable experiments under Settings to AI Experiments and try the generate button in the title field. The plugin supports OpenAI, Google AI, and Anthropic. This is still experimental, so staging first is the sensible move.

Meanwhile, Gutenberg keeps teasing the future with two experimental blocks called out in the December 2025 developer update. Breadcrumbs is being tuned for real navigation use cases and is expected to stabilize early in the WordPress 7.0 cycle. Tabs is also available as an experimental block, supporting horizontal and vertical layouts, but it is still early days and must be enabled via Gutenberg Experiments.

The sleeper win is performance. WordPress 6.9 adds fetchpriority controls for scripts and script modules, allows script modules in the footer to reduce head contention, modernizes the emoji detection script so it stops blocking rendering, and introduces a template enhancement output buffer that unlocks optimizations that were previously awkward at scale. Core is still compatible down to PHP 7.2.24+, while PHP 8.4 and PHP 8.5 remain labeled beta support in 6.9.