Over the past year, AI tools have gone from curiosity to everyday tools for web developers. But it's not about pressing a button and getting a finished site it's about knowing where in the process AI actually saves time and where you still need to think for yourself. Here's how we use AI in our own WordPress projects.
Planning: from brief to structure in minutes
The first step in any WordPress project is understanding what the client needs. This is where AI can save hours. When we took on the job of modernizing scangothia.se, a WordPress site that hadn't been updated since 2017, we started by describing the client's business and requirements to Claude Code. Within a short period of time, we had a page structure with suggested sections, content hierarchy, and the components needed.
The result wasn't a finished specification, but a solid starting point to iterate on. What previously required a couple of planning meetings took a fraction of the time, including an initial design proposal the client could react to right away.
Code generation: faster theme development
This is where AI makes the biggest difference in our process. For the ScanGothia project, we built an entirely custom WordPress theme from scratch with Claude Code. Instead of buying a ready-made theme and adapting it, we described the design we wanted, together with the color palett the client liked and the AI generated component after component: hero section, catalog view with image uploads, subpages with proper typography, and a responsive menu structure.
The entire frontend effort, from component building to section balancing, took roughly half the time compared to traditional development. We still needed to adjust spacing, edge cases, and make sure everything matched WordPress theme structure, but the groundwork went remarkably fast.
Important: we never copy AI-generated code straight into production. Every snippet is reviewed, tested, and adapted. The AI generates a starting point not the final product.
Content production: text that actually sounds human
Many small business owners struggle to produce text for their new site. "Write an about page" can become a project that delays the entire launch. AI can help here by generating drafts based on short conversations with the client.
We use a two-step process. First, we interview the client with four or five questions: what do you do, who are your customers, what sets you apart from competitors, what tone do you want? Then we feed the answers to an AI and ask for a draft per page. The client edits and approves and the result is that they have site copy that sounds like them, not like a robot.
The same method works for WooCommerce product descriptions. Give the AI a product image and basic data, and you get a description that can then be fine-tuned. With hundreds of products, this method saves days of work.
SEO: metadata and structure without guesswork
Writing good meta titles and descriptions for every page is tedious but important. AI is perfect for this kind of repetitive task. We give it the page content and ask for an SEO-optimized title under 60 characters and a description under 155 characters. It often gets it right on the first try.
We also use AI to analyze page structure from an SEO perspective: are there missing H2 headings, is the hierarchy logical, do all images have alt text? It doesn't replace tools like Yoast or RankMath, but it gives you a quick second opinion before the site goes live.
Debugging: the most patient colleague
Every WordPress developer has stared at a white screen, a strange PHP error, or a WooCommerce hook that won't fire. Traditionally, you'd Google it, read three StackOverflow threads, and test until it works. With AI, you can instead paste the error message, explain the context, and get targeted suggestions within seconds.
This works especially well for plugin conflicts. Describe the symptoms — "the checkout page shows a 500 error only when Klarna is active and the cart has more than three products" and the AI can often pinpoint the cause faster than manual debugging.
“AI doesn't replace a skilled WordPress developer. But it makes a skilled developer faster, more consistent, and better at delivering on time. That's the difference between having an experienced colleague to bounce ideas off and sitting alone in front of the screen.”
Where do you draw the line?
There are things AI shouldn't do in a WordPress project. Security-critical decisions like what permissions a role should have, how payment data is handled, which endpoints are exposed require human decision making. The same goes for architectural choices that affect long-term scalability and maintainability.
We think of AI as a junior developer with universal knowledge but no judgment. It knows how to do things, but not always whether you should do them. Your job as a developer or client is to steer, review, and make the final calls.