The Abilities API is a developer feature that gives WordPress a single, discoverable registry of what a site can do. Like hooks but for consumable APIs, Abilities are a functional primitive that allow 3rd party code to integrate with plugin and custom functionality as if it were a first-party feature.
Available since WordPress 6.9, Abilities are not AI-specific, but meant to help stabilize fragile plugin ecostems. The Core AI Team uses Abilities in the MCP Adapter - a narrow compatibility shim that allows AI tools to call Abilities via the MCP protocol - and in our other canonical plugins to ensure ecosystem stability for users while iterating quickly on implementation details.
Learn more about the Abilities API at Nik McLaughlin's talk: "Abilities API for Humans"