WP

WP Apps

Build with wp-app

Create a WordPress app

With the wp-app framework, you can build frontend apps on WordPress. It is opinionated, handling routing, admin bar integration, and theme isolation for you.

Start with the web wizard, explore the code below, or scaffold locally with Composer.

Open the web wizard
Explore the code below

What makes the wp-app framework powerful is that it provides a blank canvas that you or an AI can work in, not restricted by the wp-admin UI, because it’s all frontend.

Alex Kirk

A Composer package

wp-app is published on Packagist, so a plugin you already have can require the framework directly instead of starting from the scaffolder.

composer require akirk/wp-app

akirk/wp-app on Packagist

Start with the wizard

The create-wp-app wizard asks for the plugin name, namespace, author, URL path, and whether to start minimal or with the fuller BaseApp structure. The scaffold browser above does the same in your browser; the standalone web wizard can additionally let an AI model build the app on top of the scaffold. Or scaffold locally with Composer.

composer create-project akirk/create-wp-app my-app

Try locally

Run a local WordPress Playground instance with your plugin mounted and activated.

npx @wp-playground/cli@latest server --auto-mount=my-app --login

Install in WordPress

Move the plugin folder to wp-content/plugins/, activate it, and visit the URL path you chose.

What wp-app gives you

  • Routing — URL patterns with WordPress rewrite rules, parameters, templates, per-route capabilities.
  • Access control — login, WordPress capabilities, gating REST reads.
  • Abilities — expose the app to assistants, automation and other apps.
  • Offline PWA support — app-scoped manifests, service workers, offline caching.
  • Theme isolation — clean app output without the active theme’s markup and styles.
  • Admin bar integration — app navigation in the WordPress toolbar.
  • Client-side encryption — encrypt fields in the browser before they reach the server.

Each feature has a short, single-topic page in the wp-app docs. New to it? Start with Getting Started or follow the Tutorial from a single route to a full app.

Explore the code

Pick a scaffold or the example app, edit any file and run it in WordPress Playground right here. Every app in the catalog is open source too, so each one is a working example you can read, run and take apart.

View on GitHub

Everything happens in your browser: the files are zipped here with the wp-app runtime bundled, and Playground runs WordPress in the page. Nothing is uploaded.

Your app runs right here

Press “Run in Playground” and a fresh WordPress boots inside this box with the files above installed and activated. It takes a few seconds; nothing is installed on your computer.

Work with AI tools

The wp-app README includes a Claude Code integration so the framework conventions can be available while building or modifying an app. There is more on the AI page: an assistant that lives on your site, and connecting ChatGPT, Claude and other agents to your apps.

/plugin marketplace add akirk/wp-app
/plugin install wpapp@wp-app