Module 9 — Beyond Text and Images

Goal: cover speech and video generation. (planned, not yet written)

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Table of contents

Goal: first working call, safely.

What Is the AI Client? Provider-agnostic API, Connectors, why it matters
Your First AI Call Prompt → generate → result
Never Trust the Network — Error Handling WP_Error convention, the habit to build now
Debugging AI Client Failures is_wp_error() tells you that something failed; this is how you find out why
Giving the AI a Job — System Instructions Role vs. request

Goal: precise, predictable, cost-aware text generation.

The Creativity Dial — Temperature Randomness vs. determinism
Don’t Blow the Budget — Max Tokens What a token is; cost & length control
Ask for JSON, Not Prose Structured output via JSON schema
Using the Data, Saving JSON to Post Meta Decoding & using the data (save to post meta)
Give Me Options — Multiple Variations Several candidates, one call
Fine-Tuning Generation, Top-P, Top-K, and Stop Sequences Alternative sampling controls, plain-English, when to reach for these vs. temperature

Goal: images and mixed-media output.

Goal: move beyond single-shot prompts.

Give the AI a File Passing an image/document as input (e.g. auto-describe an uploaded image)
Multi-Turn Conversations Why LLMs are stateless and how history fixes that, shown as a before/after comparison

Goal: code that belongs in a real, published plugin.

Don’t Build UI Blindly, Feature Detection Check before you render; graceful degradation
What Actually Happened? — Full Result Objects Metadata: tokens, provider, model
Politely Requesting a Model — Model Preferences Preference vs. requirement; fallback chain
Exposing AI to the Frontend, Safely Why there's no direct client-side call; building your own scoped REST endpoint
Who Gets to Use AI? — Access Control Blocking/limiting prompts globally or conditionally

Goal: bring AI into the actual authoring experience, not just admin-side PHP.

Build Your First AI-Powered Block Registering a static block whose editor UI calls a new REST endpoint (same pattern as Ep. 20) via apiFetch
Add “Improve with AI” to Existing Blocks Extending core blocks via block filters/toolbar controls, modifying RichText content
AI Image Block — Generate & Insert Images from the Editor Editor-side image generation UI, inserting into Media Library / Image block

Goal: AI features your site's visitors actually use — not just wp-admin.

A Public AI-Powered FAQ / Search Widget Public-facing REST endpoint security: nonces, rate limiting, capability scoping for logged-out users
Smart Comment Reply Suggestions Logged-in-only frontend feature, JS + REST
A Multi-Turn Chatbot Widget on the Frontend Combining with_history() (Ep. 16) with the REST pattern (Ep. 20) for a stateful frontend chat

Goal: combine everything into shippable features.

Capstone 1: AI Alt-Text Generator Prompt + system instruction + JSON schema + error handling + feature detection + REST endpoint — admin/Media Library feature
Capstone 2: AI Content Block + Frontend Widget Custom block (Module 6) + public REST + history (Module 7) — a block editor tool and the matching frontend-facing experience it powers