Tidbits from Brian - Issue #54

AI content is 90% engagement farming and 10% insanely useful. 🫣

Mar 31, 2026

I’ve been thinking about this a lot lately. 90% of the stuff I see online about AI feels like either engagement farming or slop. And then, on the flip side, the other 10% of AI-related content is actually extremely useful. It’s like sifting through a box of cereal every day to find the prize at the bottom. 🥣

Things like:

You vibe-coded an app or a website in 24 hours, but have you thought about how you'll maintain and support it?
Is the code something you’re going to have to refactor later?
Have you followed through with your vibe-coded app to actually make money?
If you’re handing it off to a client, do they know anything about how to use an AI tool?

It’s one thing for a developer with over a decade of experience in their field to use AI; it’s another for a regular user. That developer has years of understanding behind their prompts. When something goes wrong (and it will), or it hallucinates (which I’ve still seen AI do daily), they can quickly backtrack. 💭 A regular user won’t know they need to.

If I had blindly trusted everything Claude told me, I would have wasted hundreds of hours. And I’ve seen this firsthand with clients. Many now share what AI told them in support tickets, and it’s often flat-out false. Or they went down the wrong rabbit hole, which made things even worse.

I really enjoyed this article from Alex on why static sites and vibe coding are not a client strategy, and I agree with a lot of what he said. This is one reason why I think WordPress still has some time left. ⌛

And then there are things like OpenClaw. While a 24/7 AI agent is cool, I can’t think of a single thing in my life where it would increase my productivity or save me time (please prove me wrong!). I would love to see some more real-world use cases, rather than just fluff on social media. It honestly just feels like a big playground at the moment (not anything wrong with that). 🛝

With that being said, AI is insanely useful for certain things, and it would be naive to think we'll ever go back. I was definitely stubbornly resistant to AI at first. But now I use it daily in my work, as does my brother. Tools like Claude and Cursor never close on our computers. My last newsletter had examples of how I use AI to troubleshoot WordPress performance issues. ⚡

If you aren’t using AI yet, it’s just a matter of time. But be careful with what you read online. It’s hard to know exactly how much “productive work” is actually happening. AI has a tendency to make you think you’re smarter than you are (excellent video). 🫣 I think those with years of experience in their fields, combined with AI, are the ones making the most of it right now.

Updates ✍️

We pushed out an update for our Perfmatters WordPress plugin. Here are a few of the changes:

Updated PHP CSS Parser library to 9.3.0. This includes many improvements for our Remove Unused CSS feature (more accurate parsing and compatibility). ⚡
Increased minimum required PHP version to 8.1 to allow for library updates and support for future code performance improvements.
New perfmatters_rucss_logged_in filter that allows you to force used CSS to run when logged in (still front-end only) and create separate copies of used CSS for logged-in requests. This is experimental and only for advanced users; results may vary.
Added additional logic to used CSS generation to better deal with layer elements that are declared without a content block.
Added PHP Scoper to our plugin development workflow to be able to silo specific third-party libraries to prevent conflicts with other plugins. 👨‍🔧
Removed built-in stylesheet exclusion for Bricks’ layer files. We recommend clearing used CSS after updating.
Added new CSS helper method to rewrite relative URLs in stylesheets that will be printed inline using regex only to prevent having to pass them through the parser. This improves compatibility when using the perfmatters_rucss_inline_stylesheets filter. 👍
Made some adjustments to clean_html regex pattern to avoid potential backtracking which could end up hitting a PCRE limit in some cases.
Made plugin UI styles adjustments in preparation for WordPress 7. 🎨
Made improvements to visual transitions during hard reloads in the plugin UI.
Updated code snippets author column to use the user’s display name instead of nice name to match the single snippet layout.
Updated disable RSS feeds function to return a 410 header instead of a 301 when requesting a feed URL.
Made some changes to plugin UI nav JS to improve compatibility when wrapper elements are added in the HTML from another source.
Fixed an issue that was causing certain attribute values to conflict with the HTML parent selector matching regex.
Fixed an issue where specific WooCommerce product types were not getting the built-in product exclusion selector added to generated used CSS.
Fixed an issue where HTML snippets with a condition mismatch were causing the original content to return blank.
Fixed an issue where code snippet input preserved in the form after a failed save request was not properly unslashed.
Fixed an issue where the code snippet code type was no longer visible and the selected value was lost after a failed save request.
Fixed a possible PHP 8.2+ deprecation warning that could occur in specific server environments during PMCS initialization.
Code snippet security updates to form submission handling. 🔒

We also pushed out an update for our Novashare WordPress plugin. Here are a few of the changes:

Updated Mastodon share link to use their new official share workflow. This streamlines things by remembering the instance you connected to in your browser’s local storage. 🧠

Added new share and follow buttons for Gab.
Added new novashare_share_link_target filter, which allows you to adjust the default target value (_blank or _self) for share button links. 🔗
Made plugin UI styles adjustments in preparation for WordPress 7.
Made improvements to visual transitions during hard reloads in the plugin UI.
Fixed an issue in the post meta UI where images were expanding beyond their containers on some sites.
Fixed multiple plugin UI HTML warnings for incorrect label target IDs. ⚠️
Removed some old redundant tooltip styles from the admin stylesheet.

Interesting things 🔎

Misc.

Microsoft brings Xbox mode to Windows 11 PCs next month. And the new CEO is trying to reset Xbox’s brand image. If you’re a gamer, it will be interesting to see how this pans out.
The FCC just banned the sale of new Wi-Fi router models made outside the US. Yikes! That is like all of them. 😅 Note that it’s only new ones, not existing ones or ones with deals already in place.
When age verification moves into your operating system.
Prime Video is about to take 4K streaming away from basic users, while Netflix is raising prices again (for those in the US).

WordPress

WordPress is running an experiment to highlight newer plugins in the featured plugins section on the repository. Eight plugins are selected every two weeks. I think this is a great idea. There are many amazing plugin developers who deserve more eyeballs. 👀
You can now log in to your WordPress sites with a single click in MyKinsta. Similar to how the magic login process works in InstaWP. 👏
The awesome team at Roots has launched WP Packages: An independent, open source Composer repository for WordPress plugins and themes.
Most users still don’t realize the Command Palette exists. It’s a great and sometimes quicker way to navigate a site without using the mouse. In WordPress 7.0, they are adding a shortcut in the Omnibar to make this more apparent.

It looks like WordPress 7.0 might be getting delayed. Honestly, there is a lot going on with this release, and I would prefer they wait to get everything right.
I’ve ignored the whole WordPress and WP Engine drama until now. But I finally spoke up regarding some of the behavior. I find name-calling from the main WordPress X account kind of childish. I don’t care what you do on your personal accounts. It’s just not a good look for the community.
Brian Jackson@brianleejackson
Seriously, who is running this account? This is downright embarrassing. I don't care what legal battles are going on. Have some class when you are representing an entire community. I can't be the only one who finds this childish?
WordPress @WordPress
It's cute when companies think customers are dumb and they can openwash their way to a good reputation.
4:03 AM · Mar 13, 2026 · 29.6K Views
6 Replies · 5 Reposts · 219 Likes
WordPress Jobs got a redesign. Looks much better!
Developers can now create simple blocks using only PHP. This is meant for blocks that only need server-side rendering and aren’t meant to be highly interactive. Awesome to have this available now. Ryan put together a good example.
Meet GT Link Manager, a free Pretty Links alternative built from the ground up with performance in mind. Worth checking out!
The official WordPress Plugin Checker offers automated code review for security and best practices. Always a great way to check things you might have missed.

Marketing

The internet’s most-read tech publications have lost 58% of their Google traffic since 2024. 😮 And other data shows that search referral traffic is down 60% for small publishers.
94% of AI citations come from non-paid sources. Gartner is telling CMOs to double their PR budgets by 2027.

Performance

DebugHawk now has a free plan, no credit card needed! Definitely recommend giving it a try if you haven’t already.
InstaWP got some great performance updates:
- Static assets are now cached via Bunny CDN edge rules even for logged-in WordPress users.
- PHP 8.5 is now available (although it seems it was temporarily pulled).
Looks like client-side image optimization in WordPress core has been delayed until 7.1.
Rapyd Cloud launched its Cloudflare Enterprise integration, including full page cache at the edge for fast response times and low TTFB. ⚡
New Container Timing metric is being worked on. The Bloomberg Terminal uses this to measure human-perceived time to start apps and found it more useful than LCP. Will be interesting to see what happens with this.
Enjoyed sitting down with Topher to discuss how Perfmatters can help make your WordPress site faster.

AI

I really enjoyed this article on how the internet used to feel more human.
A complete guide to CLAUDE.md, custom commands, skills, agents, and permissions, and how to set them up properly.
Phota Studio and Phota API bring personalized photo editing and generation to developers, photographers, and creators. Here are some images I created of myself with it. Was really impressed! 😮

Google has launched Stitch, think of it like an AI-powered Figma alternative.
Had a great time talking about WordPress and AI with Kurt and Jonathan on the WP-Tonic podcast.
OpenAI released GPT‑5.4 (as well as mini and nano), their most capable and efficient frontier models for professional work.
Google Search Console MCP: step-by-step setup guide.
Perplexity announced Personal Computer, a continuously running app (usually on a Mac mini) that gives Perplexity’s AI agents always-on local access to your files, apps, and sessions.
Google employees have a new AI tool called Agent Smith. It builds on Antigravity, can interact with apps, and works asynchronously in the background.

james hawkins@james406

claude's getting really snippy lately

7:01 PM · Mar 3, 2026 · 239K Views

105 Replies · 204 Reposts · 6.06K Likes

Tony wrote an interesting post on why he is ditching WordPress for static sites + AI, and what happened. Vikas also shared a similar thread from Reddit. However, I have yet to see a single post about this from a “non-developer.” I 100% believe AI is changing things. But none of my close friends even use AI much. As I mentioned earlier, let me see an “average” WordPress user try to do this and maintain it.