WordPress Studio CLI

wp-studio is the standalone, CLI-only version of WordPress Studio – a fast, free, open source tool for local WordPress development all powered by WordPress Playground and WordPress.com.

If you already have Studio installed, then the easiest way to use the CLI is to open Studio, go to the settings modal and ensure that the "Studio CLI" toggle is enabled.

The Studio CLI lets you:

• Create, run, and manage local WordPress sites from the terminal.
• Run WP-CLI commands.
• Import and export site backups.
• Pull from and push to WordPress.com sites.
• Publish ephemeral preview sites to share (requires WordPress.com login).
• Build WordPress sites in Studio Code with an interactive AI agent specialized in WordPress, backed by the full power of the Studio CLI.
• Integrate with other AI coding agents. Every site comes with an AGENTS.md file.

Table of contents

• Requirements
• Installation
• Quick start
• Usage
• Studio Code
• Import and export
• Sync with WordPress.com and Pressable
• Preview sites

Requirements

wp-studio runs best on Node.js 24 or higher, which supports more recent V8 WASM APIs. Node.js 22 or higher is required. You can download the appropriate version from the Node.js website.

Installation

Run without installing:

npx wp-studio@latest --help

Install globally:

npm install -g wp-studio
studio --help

Quick start

From anywhere on your system, run the following command to create a new WordPress site (with a step-by-step guide):

studio site create

Usage

The Studio CLI integrates with Studio and uses the same list of sites. Similarly to Studio, the Studio CLI also runs sites in the background. To see the list of sites under management by Studio and their current status, run the command:

studio site list

To start and stop sites, run these commands:

studio site start --path ~/Studio/my-site
studio site stop --path ~/Studio/my-site

Run WP-CLI commands in a site:

studio wp plugin list --path ~/Studio/my-site
studio wp option get home --path ~/Studio/my-site

Studio Code

🧪 Studio Code is currently in early access. Features, capabilities, and usage limits may change as it evolves.

Studio Code is an interactive AI agent specialized in building and optimizing WordPress sites. It integrates seamlessly with your Studio sites and can create themes, install plugins, edit code and content, and run WP-CLI commands autonomously from your terminal. It validates its own work through a built-in feedback loop that takes screenshots and confirms block syntax. You can use frontier models through the WordPress.com provider or bring your own API keys.

studio code

Delete, lis,t or resume a previous session:

studio code sessions delete
studio code sessions list
studio code sessions resume

Import and export

The Studio CLI allows you to import and export local backups.

When exporting, choose either a full-site backup as a .zip or .tar.gz file, or a database-only backup as a .sql file.

For imports, backup files from your WordPress.com site or from Jetpack’s Activity Log page are supported. So are .wpress files and .zip files from WordPress Playground or Local. For more details, see the documentation.

studio export --path ~/Studio/my-site
studio export --path ~/Studio/my-site --mode db
studio import ~/Backups/my-site-backup.zip --path ~/Studio/my-site

Sync with WordPress.com and Pressable

You can pull from and push to remote sites on both WordPress.com and Pressable. Both commands support selective sync, so you can decide which files to sync and whether to include the database.

studio pull --path ~/Studio/my-site
studio push --path ~/Studio/my-site

Preview sites

The Studio CLI lets you share your work through preview sites. These are powered by WordPress.com on a temporary domain (wp.build), and they allow you to share snapshots of your local sites with clients or team members.

To publish preview sites, you need to first authenticate with WordPress.com:

studio auth login

Publish a preview with this command:

studio preview create --path ~/Studio/my-site