Povilas Staskus

Engineer at @Automattic · @WooCommerce. Building in-person payments, POS & mobile 🇱🇹

[Andrej Karpathy @karpathy]

Dusting off this tweet from April because this gap in shared understanding of LLM capability is *widening*. It's now less "two groups of people speaking past each other" and more a sharp funnel.

- Napkin math somewhere around 6B people (~75% of the population) have barely come in contact with LLMs at all.
- Around 1-2B (~20%) are casual and infrequent users of free-tier ChatGPT-like products. This group sees derpy chatbots and treats them a bit like a better Google search, a writing aid, or etc. Maybe an agent tries to book you a flight. I have non-tech friends who (reasonably, imo) say they have not much use for it at all. Even many professionals outside of math&code are in this tier. For example, execs and many other functions spend a lot of their time talking to other people, so while they understand what is happening intellectually, it is still second-hand and a bit abstract.
- Now we get to professional use of frontier-grade LLMs in math&code. Somewhere around 20M people (0.2%) see first-hand that large, complex projects that used to take them weeks/months can now be completed by agents with a prompt. Building apps, copying apps, translating apps, decompiling apps from binaries... This has all happened very quickly and recently - less than 1 year ago, I was writing code manually by hand, typing memorized computer code commands into a code editor character by character, occasionally pressing Tab to autocomplete a little chunk of code.
- And finally we get to the ~5,000 people (~0.00006%) with access to frontier-grade systems internally. The external world has seen the preview. It looks like swarms of thousands of agents collaborating over weeks on software mega projects: minting zero days, running cyber attacks and defenses at machine speeds, discovering new science, advancing the frontier of mathematics. Things that would have taken top professionals in the industry years of work. Meanwhile, human review and comprehension are starting to fall behind. For example, people are still involved in the "archeology" of the OpenAI-HF incident from many months ago. Mathematicians may be poring over the 722 manuscripts on frontier mathematics for a while.

The funnel is driven by a combination of factors:
1. The impact scales with ambition, problem size, and horizon. A question with a paragraph answer barely stresses the system. You need a reservoir of big, difficult problems that you really care about. This aspect drives the consumer / professional dimension of the funnel.
2. The jaggedness of the system (which I have written about a lot separately). Capability peaks in domains that are digital, verifiable and economically valuable. This is because LLM capability emerges from reinforcement learning on verifiable rewards on a curated environment mixture driven by revenue potential. This aspect primarily drives the area (e.g. math&code) dimension of the funnel.
3. Access. Free-tier, paid-tier, internal.

So this is the weirdness of the moment. The general public has mostly not interacted with these systems. When they have, it looks like a derpy chatbot. The majority of professionals still see only a modest uplift. And a small sliver of professionals are experiencing the vertigo of the curve going vertical. And it is all happening at the same time.

[Povilas Staskus @PovilasStaskus]

In Málaga with the Woo mobile payments team for our meetup 👋 Opened a Reddit AMA about WooCommerce POS, Tap to Pay, and in-person selling with Woo. Ask us anything:
https://t.co/wW0coOmS6W

[Woo @WooCommerce]

WooCommerce POS now runs on iPhone in the UK. 📲

With Tap to Pay on iPhone, the phone itself acts as the card reader.

Available for UK-based merchants on iPhones running iOS 26 or later:

https://t.co/xy9mzS612R

[Woo @WooCommerce]

Did you know WooCommerce POS is currently being used at #WCUS for the WordPress Mercantile?

Learn more about WooCommerce POS: https://t.co/yw7uabPIdu

[Matt Mullenweg @photomatt]

We had a soft launch of @SpacefastHQ yesterday before our board meeting, @batuhan (and now a team!) have been cooking what I think is the future of @WordPress and AI. You don't have to know or think WordPress, but this leverages https://t.co/1QpKVWUP79 to give you a Real Database, auth, uploads, email, @akismet / @automattic spam protection, and soon stats.

The architecture is amazing I'd actually love to talk to @Lovable et al see if we can host things for them for less than they spend now.

Datacenter space and components are getting pricey... So we might have to limit signups to prioritize our @WordPressVIP customers but get in while you can!

[kitze 🛠️ tinkerer.club @thekitze]

when the cost of jev will drop to $0 programming will be changed forever.

you can literally use plain english language to replace certain complex coding statements.

this will basically be the new programming.

[Woo @WooCommerce]

WooCommerce In-Person Payments just expanded to 13 new countries across Europe, Singapore, and New Zealand.

Accept card-present payments via WisePad 3 readers and manage everything from the Woo mobile app.

Sell anywhere: https://t.co/PKynjbh2Xl

[Design at Woo @designatwoo]

Together with @jillhello and @annchichii, we’re exploring improvements to shipping setup in WooCommerce for Radical Speed Month at Automattic.

Run or help set up a store that sells physical products? We’d love your feedback. 🙏 Thank you!
https://t.co/UgzT6lIXpu

[fatih kadir akın @fkadev]

🎥 Introducing Pressship: a terminal-first, agent-ready CLI workflow for @WordPress plugin publishing.

The idea: make plugin releases simpler, more predictable, and more agent-ready, while keeping @WordPress review + SVN flows explicit.

→ https://t.co/FBMnoLSd2U

[Povilas Staskus @PovilasStaskus]

A couple of weeks ago I shared that we're exploring how AI agents could help Woo merchants do more from their phone. Today, we're opening beta testing in the WooCommerce mobile app.

It covers the essentials: managing orders, products, customers, and basic analytics. It can safely make changes too, with your confirmation. This is the foundation. We'll keep polishing the experience and expanding what it can do over time.

Early access is starting with https://t.co/06it4IFTFQ and Jetpack-powered stores. Join our beta tester groups to try it first and get every new feature early 👀

Android: https://t.co/irObPUSFQe
iOS: https://t.co/JRgUiSfNpk

[Povilas Staskus @PovilasStaskus]

At @automattic, we’re doing a one-month experiment called Radical Speed Month where we pair up, move fast, and ship: https://t.co/Hq4cwnyPx6

I’m exploring how AI agents could help Woo merchants do more from their phone, with useful insights, powerful actions, and an experience that feels built into the WooCommerce app.

A sneak peek at the first development steps 👀

If you run a store, what would you most want help doing from your phone? Let me know. I’d love to use that to shape the first iteration.

[Artur Piszek @artpi]

The thing keeping me working on WordPress is that stuff works together.

Today I shipped WordPress Workspace: A way for your WordPress to work together with your Mac. It includes:

- AI Agent
- Screenshot tool / Media Upload
- Voice dictation

So much more in the works

[James Kemp @jamesckemp]

I really like where this prototype for @WooCommerce variations is heading! Here's a 5 mins walkthrough of how it works, with a question for you at the end about global/local attributes.

Let me know your thoughts, try the prototype yourself, give feedback via the form. Appreciate it!

#radicalspeedmonth

[Dave Martin @itsdavemartin]

Want a private social network just for friends & family?

@josephscott and I built a simple way to do it on https://t.co/2LBJaBUnBV as part of Automattic’s AI build month:

https://t.co/zkWaenrtoA

[Povilas Staskus @PovilasStaskus]

@SoFrenchNow @automattic Good point. We’ll talk with the team about better ways to surface custom fields in the order view. Just to make sure I understand, do you mean selecting which custom fields show as labels in the orders list, next to things like order number, customer, total, and date?

[Povilas Staskus @PovilasStaskus]

At @automattic, we’re doing a one-month experiment called Radical Speed Month where we pair up, move fast, and ship: https://t.co/Hq4cwnyPx6

I’m exploring how AI agents could help Woo merchants do more from their phone, with useful insights, powerful actions, and an experience that feels built into the WooCommerce app.

A sneak peek at the first development steps 👀

If you run a store, what would you most want help doing from your phone? Let me know. I’d love to use that to shape the first iteration.

[Povilas Staskus @PovilasStaskus]

@SoFrenchNow @automattic Thanks! This is a great example. It’s exactly the kind of request we want to support, updating a whole category or set of products in one go.

Voice is something we haven’t focused on yet, but we should consider it in earlier iterations.

[Panos (Panagiotis Synetos) @PanosSynetos]

Heard of #RadicalSpeedMonth at @automattic? It’s a month-long sprint where pairs ship fast! 🚀
I’m teaming up with @jamesckemp to level up @WooCommerce Product Add-Ons by looking at long-standing requests like conditional logic, performance, and other top-requested features. 🛠️✨

[James Kemp @jamesckemp]

You might have heard of Radical Speed Month at @automattic? It's a new experiment, similar to a hackathon, where we team up in pairs and work closely together on something that we want to ship by the end of the month. I took this as an opportunity to work on two things that I feel are very important. (Starting now that I'm back from #CheckoutSummit!)

First thing is the way that users create and manage variations in @WooCommerce. For this project I've teamed up with Poli, one of our very talented designers. Very excited with where it's going. For years, the variation experience within WooCommerce has been far from ideal.

As a user, you have to click between multiple tabs, reload the page, deal with attributes, generate variations in batches of 50. Once those variations are created, you still have the hassle of multi-page navigation, depending on how many variations you have. Really just an experience that's very much lacking.

Our project aims to massively simplify this process without affecting the underlying data, so anyone can use the new process with the variations they already have. The goal is to bring it all into one tab, the variations tab, and make the creation and editing experience much more streamlined, with far fewer clicks to actually create and manage variations.

Conceptual design exploration attached.

Additionally, I'm working with @PanosSynetos on a second project for our Product Add-Ons plugin, with the goal to dramatically improve the ratings of that plugin in the marketplace. Some of the ways we plan to do this are by looking at long-standing feature requests like conditional logic, as well as the reviews that have come in, general performance, and quality of life improvements.

It's going to be a huge challenge to improve the ratings score, as we'll need a lot of five-star ratings to make this happen. But, we should be able to see the positive effect almost immediately once we've figured out the issues with the plugin. Of course, I love building in public, so I'll be sharing as much as I can about this project, about these projects, as we go through them.

As always, I'll be looking for feedback, good or bad, to ensure we're building what you as a user actually want. Very excited by this way of working! 🚀

#radicalspeedmonth

[Luigi Teschio @gigitux]

We’ve opened a new epic to rethink product catalog management in WooCommerce.

Exploring:
•Faster table-based workflows
•Inline product variations
•Improved quick & bulk editing

Early stage, building in public 👇

https://t.co/hioOo8Kdmy

[Jamie Marsland - Head of WordPress YouTube ❤️ @pootlepress]

If you're building with WordPress try this 👇

Design system → AI agent → working WordPress site, in a few minutes 🔥

1. Go to https://t.co/XbQnb1fwi2 and ask Claude to open WordPress Playground

2. Grab a DESIGN.md from https://t.co/XvL5RkpOPp (Vercel, Linear, and Stripe are great starting points) and upload it to Claude

3. Tell it: "Use this DESIGN.md to build a WordPress site — homepage, about page, and a blog with 3 sample posts."

Open wp-admin from the toolbar and keep editing. Install plugins, swap themes, write posts — everything persists between reloads.

💡 Make sure Claude uses Playground's persistent storage (storage=browser) — otherwise you'll get a fresh blueprint every reload instead of the site you're building.

No local install. No hosting. No deploy step. The whole site lives in your browser tab — reload it tomorrow and your work is still there.