Performance Chat Summary: 19 May 2026

The full chat log is available beginning here on Slack.

WordPress Performance Trac tickets

• @westonruter shared updates related to WordPress 7.0 ahead of the scheduled release the next day. Regarding loading block styles on classic themes, which had several fixes during the 7.0 release cycle, @westonruter updated the Load Combined Core Block Assets plugin to bump the “Tested up to” version and added an inline admin notice for sites on 7.0 with the plugin active, asking users to re-check whether the plugin is still needed.

Performance Lab Plugin (and other performance plugins)

• @westonruter also updated the “Tested up to” version for the Instant Back/Forward plugin, which is included among the features listed in Performance Lab. @westonruter mentioned that the “Tested up to” versions for the Performance Lab plugins still need to be updated on WordPress.org, though the changes had already been done in Git.
• @westonruter shared that PR #2469 bumps the minimum supported PHP version in the Performance Lab monorepo from PHP 7.2 to PHP 7.4.
• @westonruter also shared PR #2479, which adds an .npmrc file to harden npm installs against supply chain attacks. Security was improved with ignore-scripts = true in the .npmrc among other enhancements. @westonruter noted that this means the pre-commit Husky hooks are no longer installed automatically, so the handbook documentation was updated to mention that npm run prepare now needs to be run during the initial setup.
• @westonruter also shared PR #2482, which fixes plugin installation and activation flows in Performance Lab when WordPress is using FTP filesystem methods such as ftpext or ftpsockets. The issue was originally discovered while testing the new Connectors screen in Core, where provider plugins failed to install. @westonruter mentioned that the PR is still being kept as a draft until the related Gutenberg PR is merged.
• @westonruter also shared PR #2473 to improve GitHub Copilot usage in the Performance Lab repository by pre-warming wp-env in the coding agent setup steps. @westonruter later mentioned that the PR had been approved and was being merged.
• @westonruter added that several PRs still remain in need of review.

Open Floor

• @adamsilverstein shared a newly opened issue to explore adding AI based performance recommendations to the plugin when WordPress 7.0 is available and AI is configured #2485
  • @adamsilverstein mentioned that this may work better as a separate plugin and shared that AI has improved enough to provide genuinely useful recommendations to users and potentially even fix issues automatically. @adamsilverstein also referenced the earlier wp-performance-wizard project built two years ago, noting that it already provided good results at the time and that the new idea would likely start with a simpler approach.

Our next chat will be held on Tuesday, June 2, 2026 at 16:00 UTC in the #core-performance channel in Slack.

#core-performance, #hosting, #performance, #performance-chat, #summary