{"id":13109,"date":"2026-08-26T19:37:24","date_gmt":"2026-08-26T14:07:24","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/4ksamachar.com\/?p=13109"},"modified":"2026-08-26T19:37:24","modified_gmt":"2026-08-26T14:07:24","slug":"wptavern-231-damon-cook-on-how-wp-trend-watcher-keeps-him-up-to-date-with-wordpress","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/4ksamachar.com\/?p=13109","title":{"rendered":"WPTavern: #231 \u2013 Damon Cook on How WP Trend Watcher Keeps Him Up to Date With WordPress"},"content":{"rendered":"
Transcript<\/p>\n
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[00:00:19] Nathan Wrigley:<\/strong> Welcome to the Jukebox Podcast from WP Tavern. My name is Nathan Wrigley.<\/p>\n

Jukebox is a podcast which is dedicated to all things WordPress, the people, the events, the plugins, the blocks, the themes, and in this case a new way to keep up with WordPress news and updates.<\/p>\n

If you\u2019d like to subscribe to the podcast, you can do that by searching for WP Tavern in your podcast player of choice, or by going to wptavern.com\/feed\/podcast, and you can copy that URL into most podcast players.<\/p>\n

If you have a topic that you\u2019d like us to feature on the podcast, I\u2019m keen to hear from you and hopefully get you, or your idea, featured on the show. Head to wptavern.com\/contact\/jukebox, and use the form there.<\/p>\n

So on the podcast today, we have Damon Cook. Damon has been a developer in the WordPress ecosystem for over a decade, working with WordPress centric agencies, and more recently running his own freelance business, Noma Digital. He\u2019s a longtime community member, contributor, and someone who remains keenly engaged with the latest WordPress developments from releases like 7.1, to shifts in plugins, themes, and the broader WordPress landscape.<\/p>\n

Damon joins us today to discuss WP Trend Watcher, an open source tool he\u2019s created to help WordPress professionals keep up with the ever increasing deluge of news, community updates and feature releases. As the WordPress space grows more dynamic, and let\u2019s be honest, sometimes a bit overwhelming, WP Trend Watcher is designed to sift through a fire hose of RSS feeds, summarise the trends, and inject some much needed human curation into AI generated content.<\/p>\n

Damon talks about the importance of staying ahead in the WordPress ecosystem, especially for freelancers, agency owners, and developers who want to anticipate changes and support their clients.<\/p>\n

He gets into the technical nuts and bolts, breaking down how the tool gathers, and summarises, news. The models and local AI setup he\u2019s experimented with, and the balance between automation and critical human review.<\/p>\n

If you\u2019re someone who struggles to keep up with the relentless pace of WordPress news, and wants a smarter way to separate the worthwhile updates from the dross, this episode is for you.<\/p>\n

If you\u2019re interested in finding out more, you can find all of the links in the show notes by heading to wptavern.com\/podcast, where you\u2019ll find all the other episodes as well.<\/p>\n

And so without further delay, I bring you Damon Cook.<\/p>\n

I am joined on the podcast by Damon Cook. Hello, Damon.<\/p>\n

[00:03:04] Damon Cook:<\/strong> Hi, Nathan. Good to see you again.<\/p>\n

[00:03:05] Nathan Wrigley:<\/strong> Yeah, thank you. Damon and I had a chat at WordCamp US. I think you said a little while ago that it was in 2024. So it\u2019s been a few years since we\u2019ve had a chat, and there\u2019s been a few pivots in your life. At the time you were working for a hosting company, which I don\u2019t think you are doing anymore. But we\u2019re going to have a chat today about something which caught my attention probably on social media, I imagine, I saw it there. It\u2019s called WP Trend Watcher.<\/p>\n

I would just say at the beginning before we get stuck into the topic, if you go to the WP Tavern website, I will bury all of the links in the show notes. So anything that we discover today, go and click on the links over there. And actually given the nature of the topic, it might be wise, dear listener, to go and do that before you get into this podcast, because it\u2019ll be fun to have a poke around and be forewarned as to what is it that we\u2019re going to be looking at.<\/p>\n

So anyway, Damon, thank you for joining us again. Just before we begin, I mentioned that you have changed roles in the last 24 months or so. Do you just want to tell us a little bit about you and your roles in WordPress over these many years?<\/p>\n

[00:04:07] Damon Cook:<\/strong> Sure, yeah. Yeah, been a developer in WordPress ecosystem for over a decade. And always been with WordPress-centric agencies. And yeah, as of the past year about, I\u2019ve just been running my own freelance, Noma Digital, then also doing some contract work. And yeah, and still keeping up on all the latest WordPress news and features coming out. 7.1, what is coming out in, well yeah, in like a week, I think.<\/p>\n

[00:04:37] Nathan Wrigley:<\/strong> Yes. Yeah.<\/p>\n

[00:04:38] Damon Cook:<\/strong> Lots of cool stuff there.<\/p>\n

[00:04:39] Nathan Wrigley:<\/strong> Yeah, there really is a lot happening. Genuinely, there is a lot happening in the WordPress space. And, it may be that you\u2019re a developer, and so that side of things captures your attention. But from my perspective, I am not really a developer, but I am curious about all the things that are going on, because I\u2019m fascinated by Core and plugins and themes and blocks and all of that.<\/p>\n

But equally, the community side and all of that. There\u2019s a whole load going on, and events and marketing and loads going on. But that deluge of information, that sort of fire hose is very hard to keep a track of. Some websites that were publishing for many years die out and other ones replace them, and things come at you from different angles.<\/p>\n

And so you have built a tool, WP Trend Watcher, which you\u2019re able to put on your local machine. I believe that\u2019s right at the moment. It\u2019s a sort of local install, and we can talk about the technicalities of that in a moment.<\/p>\n

But this tool, the way that you\u2019ve built it is primarily pre-built, if you like, to go out and inspect the WordPress space so that you can summarise the zeitgeist, of what\u2019s going on in the WordPress world. You can keep up without having to do that manual slog of going out, reading everything, spending hours every day kind of wasting time, and I\u2019m doing air quotes there, if you know what I mean.<\/p>\n

Okay, so my first question is revolving around the why of this. What was the importance here that you felt that you wanted a tool that did this for you? And really what I\u2019m trying to get there is why did you feel it was important to keep up with the WordPress space? Is it\u2026 if you\u2019re a client, if you\u2019ve got relationships with clients and you\u2019re building client websites, is it not enough in your scenario just to know that WordPress drops, they do a version change every now and again, we get a release, I\u2019ve got a suite of plugins, I probably need to keep up to date with those. Why? Why are you interested in the broader landscape?<\/p>\n

[00:06:34] Damon Cook:<\/strong> Sure, yeah. I\u2019ve been a, I was pretty active contributor for a while to the project, not so much lately. But, when I was a contributor there was, I mean, there\u2019s always been a lot of news to keep up with, between Slack and Trac and WordPress.org stuff. But I started to see some of what were the reliable sources in that area. And as I work with WordPress daily, I still need to keep up with what is coming down the pipeline.<\/p>\n

And so yeah, I just wanted to take that, it was very a selfish starting point. I needed to take all these RSS feeds, get them summarised, but then also verify that, what\u2019s being summarised with AI isn\u2019t just hallucinations or some kind of, you know, mistrust was there, because that\u2019s a critical component to this project was the human layer. It\u2019s just pulling in a bunch of RSS feeds, summarizing it, and then I go through and make sure the summaries and click through it, like a lot of the stuff, and read it, and it\u2019s helpful for me to process and see what\u2019s actually going on and then provide my own judgment on it, so.<\/p>\n

[00:07:47] Nathan Wrigley:<\/strong> The sort of curious bit there then I suppose is that you, it feels like you always want to be one step ahead of what\u2019s happening in the WordPress space. And I suppose if you\u2019re being a freelancer, having that knowledge of what\u2019s coming up, particularly in WordPress and WordPress Core, because I\u2019ve noticed that a lot of RSS feeds, for want of a better word, and we\u2019ll get into that in a moment, are Core related.<\/p>\n

So that then sort of tells me that you want to be ahead of what\u2019s coming in the next feature set so that you can, I don\u2019t know, forewarn your clients, or practice things that you know are going to suddenly drop on a particular day of the year, and so that when the inevitable call comes, \u201cWhy is this there now?\u201d And, \u201cHow does this new feature work?\u201d You\u2019re ahead of it all. Does that kind of summarise your interest in it, or is it more eclectic than that? You\u2019re just curious about it because it\u2019s curious.<\/p>\n

[00:08:39] Damon Cook:<\/strong> Yeah, I mean there\u2019s certainly the curiosity is there, but yes, I do like to be at the bleeding edge of what is coming down in the new, like for example, the 7.1 release coming out. Just seeing what\u2019s being worked on, what might have gotten dropped from proposals. Yeah and just I guess being in the ecosystem, I\u2019ve seen how a lot of the community has come and gone, and what has been critically talked about is, what is a critical feature, and why might something not be worked on and all that stuff.<\/p>\n

So yeah, it\u2019s just a selfish way to keep up on the latest, developer news and, yeah, and share it out and summarise it and get some human judgment behind it.<\/p>\n

[00:09:22] Nathan Wrigley:<\/strong> A curious thing which is not related to this podcast, but most Mondays I do like a live show in which we have three or four panelists, and we bat around the WordPress news from the previous seven days. And I\u2019ve been doing that show for, oh, I don\u2019t know, maybe seven or eight years or something like that. And in the sort of the week preceding, I go around the internet, I look at social networks, I read the blogs that I\u2019m familiar with. I\u2019ve got a giant list of RSS URLs in a feed reader, and I go through, and I read them, and I look at them all.<\/p>\n

And it, genuinely is incredibly time inefficient. That is to say that I open things, get halfway through, realise there\u2019s nothing really for me to talk about here with my guests, and there\u2019s probably nothing for the the listeners to engage with. And so I lose a lot of time, doing that exercise, and it strikes me that in the era of AI, that would be, the intention here is to cut out that. Cut through the dross, sift out the bits and pieces that are of interest, and make the bits that finally reach your eyeballs worthy of attention.<\/p>\n

How have you orchestrated that to happen? Because with the best will in the world, I think we all know that AI can go off the rails a little bit. It may be that it doesn\u2019t quite match the intentions that you would wish it to have. How are you corralling it to be what it is that you want?<\/p>\n

[00:10:47] Damon Cook:<\/strong> Sure. Like I alluded to, it just stemmed from a selfish kind of interest in keeping up on these news sources, and I knew a lot of them all had RSS feeds. I think that even I, you know, I have a fascination, an obsession almost, with AI these days and I\u2019m always trying some cutting, more cutting edge stuff and tinkering.<\/p>\n

But I think even myself, and I think I see a lot of people confuse AI with automation. And so it\u2019s interesting to see, when I, this project, I didn\u2019t want to automate the whole thing, like just go get RSS feeds, AI summarises, AI publishes, just do it, right? Which I can, we could potentially do with the project, but I limited it to that contract of, go get these RSS feeds, the latest news, come back, summarise them, and then show them to me so I can audit them.<\/p>\n

A lot of them, I just open up like yourself. It seems counterproductive, but I actually like that\u2019s how I really keep up. Because if I just read the paragraph from the AI summary, which I do, it\u2019s it\u2019s not really covering, and might miss something in that full article that actually really interested me.<\/p>\n

So you know, I click through most of these and I\u2019m reading. I peruse, I don\u2019t read every single word for sure, but I peruse and just try to validate that the summary matches, and then I look for tidbits that might been missed that I\u2019m curious about, and then drop that in the human summary element of the published final briefing. So that\u2019s the workflow of it right now.<\/p>\n

[00:12:27] Nathan Wrigley:<\/strong> Yeah.<\/p>\n

[00:12:27] Damon Cook:<\/strong> That\u2019s how I\u2019ve set it up and I enjoy just the whole, the sequential part of like gathering and then, there is an automation of it shows me everything I gathered, and then gives me an area to write my thoughts and then I click through everything. So it\u2019s just turned into a weekly, kind of hobby project and it\u2019s fun to do, so.<\/p>\n

[00:12:48] Nathan Wrigley:<\/strong> Yeah, so the bit that is infuriating to me is just the dead time. And the dead time for me is not once I\u2019ve found the link. That for me is when it actually becomes interesting. You click the link, you open it, and you do the reading and what have you. It\u2019s finding the link and finding the interesting thing.<\/p>\n

[00:13:07] Damon Cook:<\/strong> Yep.<\/p>\n

[00:13:07] Nathan Wrigley:<\/strong> And so I think, it is totally credible to get AI to do that. And I have this, I\u2019m not a great user of AI. That is to say I\u2019m not somebody that uses AI an awful lot. But it\u2019s becoming pretty clear to me that one of the areas which it genuinely is good at is curating like a silo of information. You give it a body of information, a corpus of information, and say, \u201csummarise that,\u201d or, \u201cDraw out of that the bits that might be of interest.\u201d<\/p>\n

Now, it\u2019s not perfect, but it seems to be exceedingly good at that. The creative side, maybe less so, and we don\u2019t really need to get too much into that. But this bit of drop the corpus of information in, summarise that, publish your results. That seems like a really credible way of using AI in the year 2026, and that is indeed what you\u2019ve done.<\/p>\n

So now that you\u2019ve got this built, and I will link to a report so you can see Damon\u2019s previous, I think you\u2019ve got seven or six or something like that, previous ones from previous weeks up, and you can see them all. It basically ends up in a bullet-pointed, numbered list of titles with links, and then maybe one sentence of about 20 words following on from that. And then that will obviously either lead to a click or not.<\/p>\n

How have you found those summaries to be? The 20 or so that you\u2019ve got in each of your little editions. How have you found them to be? Do they seemingly accurately represent what\u2019s contained within, or does it tend to go off the rails a bit?<\/p>\n

[00:14:39] Damon Cook:<\/strong> No, they\u2019re accurate.<\/p>\n

[00:14:41] Nathan Wrigley:<\/strong> Yeah.<\/p>\n

[00:14:42] Damon Cook:<\/strong> The key kind of component there is when the summaries happen, it\u2019s using, I set it up because I wanted to use local models. It\u2019s all prompt-based, so essentially, it\u2019s going to these RSS feeds, getting the latest articles and links, then parsing that through AI and saying, and passing a prompt along saying, \u201csummarise this for developers and agency owners with a critical eye on, X, Y, Z.\u201d<\/p>\n

And so that\u2019s where things do actually come, they come back pretty accurate. And the inference of what the summary shows, it\u2019s fascinating. But yeah, it\u2019s pretty accurate, and the fun part is trying to prove it, to see like, \u201cokay wow,\u201d that sounds like it would interest me as a developer and agency owner. I\u2019m going to click and read through and make sure that\u2019s an actual thing, and not a hallucination. So it\u2019s like a game of just fact-checking in a way.<\/p>\n

[00:15:46] Nathan Wrigley:<\/strong> I\u2019m curious to know what it doesn\u2019t include. So for example the addition, I\u2019m going to call it an addition. I don\u2019t know. Oh, summary. There we go. Weekly summary is what you\u2019ve called it. This particular one has 19 items listed, and I don\u2019t know if it produced 19 different things and all of them got written to the page, or if, I don\u2019t know if you can see in the background, 34 just didn\u2019t cut the mustard. Can you inspect what didn\u2019t get included and thereby start to have intuition to say \u201cokay, I wonder why that one didn\u2019t cut the mustard?\u201d<\/p>\n

[00:16:20] Damon Cook:<\/strong> Yeah, there is a built-in, for the AI to, when it does a review, it checks sources and it looks for duplicate, two kind of posts on two different sites about the same exact topic. It\u2019s going to try to not do a summary on both of those.<\/p>\n

[00:16:39] Nathan Wrigley:<\/strong> Okay.<\/p>\n

[00:16:40] Damon Cook:<\/strong> So it does check for duplicates, weak language, missing sections. So it does do some of that to cut out the duplicate work. But also, yeah, it\u2019s not looking, like part of the prompt and part of the exercise for AI is to not look for superfluous, just like really fact-based deterministic stuff and not just you know. It\u2019s funny because trend is in the title, right? WP Trend Watcher.<\/p>\n

[00:17:06] Nathan Wrigley:<\/strong> Which is maybe the exact opposite of what you\u2019re after.<\/p>\n

[00:17:09] Damon Cook:<\/strong> It\u2019s kind of like it\u2019s not really looking for what\u2019s popular, but what is factual coming out of a lot of these sources.<\/p>\n

[00:17:17] Nathan Wrigley:<\/strong> Okay. When you are looking at this, this is a strange question, and I don\u2019t know how you\u2019re going to react to this. How does it make you feel? Do you have the intention that you\u2019re cheating on the Damon from five years ago would\u2019ve thought, \u201cOh, this is horrific, somebody did all this with a computer. This should be done by, a human being should be corralling this.\u201d How does it make you feel on that level?<\/p>\n

[00:17:41] Damon Cook:<\/strong> Yeah, it does make me feel cheap.<\/p>\n

[00:17:43] Nathan Wrigley:<\/strong> Yeah.<\/p>\n

[00:17:45] Damon Cook:<\/strong> And I think that\u2019s kind of why I publish these. It\u2019s trying to be transparent. So if anybody\u2019s going to go and read this, they know that I even put at the bottom how much time I spent trying to look through everything. So you can take all those facts and base whether you want to read this or not.<\/p>\n

[00:18:08] Nathan Wrigley:<\/strong> Yeah.<\/p>\n

[00:18:09] Damon Cook:<\/strong> Did he spend enough to? You can pass your own judgment. Did he spend enough time? Maybe he should have spent more time.<\/p>\n

[00:18:14] Nathan Wrigley:<\/strong> Yeah.<\/p>\n

[00:18:16] Damon Cook:<\/strong> But yeah, that\u2019s part of the exercise for me is making this open source, and just having this public, and so if folks do find it fascinating and helpful, they could even fork it and try to do something else. Or I even have, possibility to submit sources because I\u2019m always thinking \u201cShould I have another source in here?\u201d or.<\/p>\n

[00:18:39] Nathan Wrigley:<\/strong> Yes, yes.<\/p>\n

[00:18:41] Damon Cook:<\/strong> There\u2019s room for improvement too.<\/p>\n

[00:18:43] Nathan Wrigley:<\/strong> The issue there is you end up with scope creep, don\u2019t you? And before you know it, you\u2019ve got 5,000 RSS feeds that you\u2019re pummeling everywhere, and then you really are in a maze of trying to figure out what\u2019s relevant and what\u2019s useful.<\/p>\n

The report that you get on the front end, obviously, you\u2019ve got these AI generated the numbered list, in this case 19, the one that I\u2019m looking at. Again, links will be in the show notes.<\/p>\n

But then the interface that you built provides the option then to add sort of human notes, for want of a better word, at the end. So it\u2019s not just a case of, okay, that\u2019s where it ends. The idea is then that you would go in, contribute for yourself what it is that you feel is important here, free form writing like we always used to do, and so on.<\/p>\n

[00:19:24] Damon Cook:<\/strong> Yep.<\/p>\n

[00:19:24] Nathan Wrigley:<\/strong> Why did you include that bit? Why, what was the purpose in having that? Was it just a more human curated portion at the end, so you wanted to remember what you actually thought?<\/p>\n

[00:19:33] Damon Cook:<\/strong> Yeah. It\u2019s twofold. I wanted the human in the loop. It\u2019s a pretty popular phrase these days with AI, but I wanted that aspect there. But also selfishly, a game to fact-check a lot of these things and make sure AI isn\u2019t hallucinating. But also it\u2019s the exercise of memory of like going through and reading these things, because then I actually, you know, it registers in my brain. Like this is really what\u2019s coming down the pipe. Because if I just read through the summaries, even if they were 100% accurate and I just trusted them out of the box, I feel like it doesn\u2019t necessarily always register for me. So the actually exercise of going and clicking and reading through and comparing to what AI summarised is helpful for to sink in that data.<\/p>\n

[00:20:20] Nathan Wrigley:<\/strong> I think if this were something that I was looking at, and I\u2019m definitely not ruling out doing something like this because I genuinely think there\u2019s a lot of merit in my specific case for this. I think I\u2019d be looking at four of those a day and just trying to, I don\u2019t know, at 9 in the morning just before the day begins, or at 5 at night just as the day\u2019s about to end, the workday. Just go in and look at a few of those. Because I\u2019m like you, if I read the AI 20-word summary, there\u2019d be no substance to that and I wouldn\u2019t remember it.<\/p>\n

But the fact that the interface is there and those articles have been surfaced, and I presume you could probably run one of these each day and adapt what was there the previous day and what have you. So technically then, how does it work? I\u2019m fairly sure that this is a thing which you have built, and is currently sitting on a machine in your house somewhere.<\/p>\n

[00:21:08] Damon Cook:<\/strong> Yep.<\/p>\n

[00:21:08] Nathan Wrigley:<\/strong> Just describe the technicalities of what you need to get, on your machine to make this occur.<\/p>\n

[00:21:13] Damon Cook:<\/strong> Yeah. It\u2019s a TypeScript code base, and it\u2019s on GitHub, so you can fork it, contribute to it. But yeah, I run it. You can pass in kind of a flag. I run it weekly. It was just an arbitrary decision, and it felt weekly would be good. But you can, yeah, it just checks basically the last date of when it ran, and then tries to grab the sources.<\/p>\n

Then I use LM Studio application on my Mac, which allows me to kind of download models that are fit for my system. I have an 18 gigabyte memory that I can work with, so that is limiting. But, I think a lot of these models are coming down in size and the local AI movement, I don\u2019t know if it\u2019s a movement, but I think it\u2019s taking off in a lot of ways.<\/p>\n

[00:22:07] Nathan Wrigley:<\/strong> Yeah, I think so. Yeah. Yep<\/p>\n

[00:22:09] Damon Cook:<\/strong> We\u2019re starting to see a lot more, yeah, local implications. That was part of the exercise for me, was exploring that. What models I could use on my system, and then what were the results of using those models with this tool for the summaries.<\/p>\n

So yeah, I think every week at the bottom, that\u2019s part of the report is what model I used locally to run the summaries against. And I try to switch it up. I think I used probably six of them, I used the same model. I think it was a Qwen model. Then the most recent one I used, I switched it up, and it was a, I forget the name even. It was like an LS.<\/p>\n

[00:22:49] Nathan Wrigley:<\/strong> Oh, these things come and go so fast. Yeah.<\/p>\n

[00:22:51] Damon Cook:<\/strong> Yeah, exactly. And that\u2019s the fascinating part is just to drop in a new model and see how it does, and the softwares look like, because they do change. And even the report, I think you\u2019ll, if you just compare this week\u2019s with last, just the output is a little different. And I\u2019m trying to\u2026 That\u2019s something I plan on working more towards is deterministic, the output. The summaries are one thing, but then when it outputs into the final report, getting that more deterministic. Especially, I really want to have footnotes, so that people can see where these summaries and stuff are, what they\u2019re exactly they\u2019re linking to. It\u2019s kind in there but it does\u2019t always output exactly the same in formatting, so.<\/p>\n

[00:23:35] Nathan Wrigley:<\/strong> So you\u2019re doing this work on the local machine, and then obviously I\u2019m looking at it so it\u2019s published, by the looks of it on GitHub. Is that all automated or are you curating that process? Or have you got, you know, your local machine is bound to GitHub, your GitHub repository and so this is all automated in that sense as well?<\/p>\n

In other words, what I\u2019m saying is if you took a break for a month and came back, would this all just be chugging along in the background and producing these weekly reports? Or is this something that you manually invoke on a weekly basis and copy and paste and what have you?<\/p>\n

[00:24:07] Damon Cook:<\/strong> That\u2019s the part that, yes. I just run the report and write my judgment in it, then publish it to GitHub, and then GitHub does a little, it takes basically the artifacts and just spits them out. But there\u2019s not much there in the automation on GitHub. It\u2019s just publishing it to GitHub Pages.<\/p>\n

The fact that I have a section that\u2019s required for human in the loop kind of takes away full automation. I could make it run, but then I would have to take that component out of me reading through, clicking through, and writing my own judgment at the end of the report. And I don\u2019t plan on getting rid of that. I actually enjoy that aspect, so.<\/p>\n

[00:24:47] Nathan Wrigley:<\/strong> So it\u2019s become a bit of an interface. The AI plus Damon equals the finished product. You really don\u2019t want it to be automated. And in a way, that feels to me a bit like, I don\u2019t know, a race to the bottom. If we automate all the things, I just don\u2019t know where the audience for that lives, because you\u2019ll, never really know. Because there\u2019ll never be a moment where you look back at it and say, \u201cIs anybody reading this?\u201d. \u201cHas anybody talked to me about this?\u201d and what have you. Whereas the fact that you\u2019re interested in it, you\u2019re on this podcast talking about it, you\u2019ve got an interest in the subject matter, you\u2019ve clearly engaged with it. I don\u2019t really have a question there, but there\u2019s definitely something there. The fact that you\u2019re in the weeds of it and it\u2019s not just AI for AI sake, I think is important.<\/p>\n

[00:25:32] Damon Cook:<\/strong> Yeah. And it\u2019s, yeah, that\u2019s a great point. And I think that makes me, I don\u2019t know, I guess go back to, where some of this started from. Yeah, I think people are creating their own knowledge bases. And you even touched on this. Just having that corpus of artifacts, a lot of that AI can do these days, and you can automate some of that.<\/p>\n

But, how you take all that data and get the human in the loop and, is it even interesting if you, it\u2019s interesting maybe to you to read, but if you want to share that, is it going to interest others? And yeah, the human aspect is critical for me there, because, especially if you\u2019re going to share it publicly, you know.<\/p>\n

[00:26:14] Nathan Wrigley:<\/strong> Yeah.<\/p>\n

[00:26:14] Damon Cook:<\/strong> At least be transparent.<\/p>\n

[00:26:16] Nathan Wrigley:<\/strong> Yeah, so you\u2019ve called it WP Trend Watcher. And it feels to me, if I was to rewind the clock to, I don\u2019t know 2023, where for the first time we were all beguiled when ChatGPT came along, and we all just thought this whole interface was remarkable. But it felt, oh, it\u2019s novel, it\u2019s interesting, it behaves in many ways it\u2019s a bit, I don\u2019t know, passed the Turing test and it convinced us that it was human.<\/p>\n

But now that we\u2019re in the year 2026, it feels like one of AI\u2019s central roles is just, as I said earlier, these corpses of information, but not finite in the way that a human brain is. There\u2019s only a capacity that I have to remember so much, and it\u2019s alarmingly little. But over time, if you were to stick with this endeavor, the name that you\u2019ve given it, this sort of Trend Watcher, it feels like the data that you\u2019re gathering, as it grows and grows and the AI\u2019s capacity to manipulate, understand, I\u2019m doing air quotes, \u201cunderstand\u201d and, create meaning from the disparate bits of data, that will grow over time.<\/p>\n

And so it\u2019d be interesting in 2027 and 2028, what happened? Why did that bit never got built? And how did we get this thing shipped into Core? Where did it come from? What were all the little bits and pieces? Where were the jigsaw pieces that led that to happen? And how did this happen? And what\u2019s the market trend? Why have we got a 4% decrease or an 8% increase in market share? How\u2019s all that happened?<\/p>\n

So it feels to me as if you keep pushing this out, that kind of information will be available, kind of MCP-able, by simply asking it questions, in a way that we\u2019ve never had available to us in the past. Again, there\u2019s no question, but do, you know what I\u2019m saying there?<\/p>\n

[00:28:03] Damon Cook:<\/strong> Yeah. I think, when I set out to build this there is, and there is still a component where I do want to have kind of the trend watching part of taking these past reports and having AI review them, and come up with inference of was there a trend? Why, yeah, why did we go from report 1 to report 18 about this? Maybe there\u2019s this feature in WordPress 7, whatever. What changed there? And come up with a separate component for that. I haven\u2019t built that in, but that\u2019s kind of a potential, that\u2019s always the end goal. And keeping these receipts for now and generating these reports is just the scaffolding in a way.<\/p>\n

[00:28:48] Nathan Wrigley:<\/strong> So it feels to me as if it really isn\u2019t bound to WordPress. You could run with what you\u2019ve built and point it at just about any industry or thing. Your local tennis club or, whatever it may be. You could, over time, build up this sort of trend analysis, and see what\u2019s going on.<\/p>\n

And dare I say it, you could even implement it upon yourself so that you can see, what\u2019s the cadence of my writing? How have I done my fitbit data or whatever it may be? You can see that, even as I\u2019m saying the words, I\u2019m thinking, \u201cOh, this is a dystopia that I don\u2019t want to live in.\u201d But at the same time, I\u2019m really curious as to what that bigger capacity to maintain state and hold data over time. What that will furnish us with.<\/p>\n

Because we all forget things, our brains are very ephemeral. Things that are important to us come and go. We misremember things constantly, and it will be really interesting to see what things like you\u2019ve built, are going to enable us in the future. And it does seem like this is baby steps. The humans in 2029 looking back on the work like you\u2019ve just been talking about for the last half an hour will think, \u201cOh, that was cute, but look where we got to now, we stood on the shoulders of those giants, and here we are now.\u201d It\u2019s fascinating and terrifying in equal measure. Let\u2019s say it that way.<\/p>\n

[00:30:11] Damon Cook:<\/strong> Yes. Yeah, absolutely.<\/p>\n

[00:30:13] Nathan Wrigley:<\/strong> Yeah.<\/p>\n

[00:30:14] Damon Cook:<\/strong> There\u2019s so much data and it\u2019s just growing, right?<\/p>\n

[00:30:17] Nathan Wrigley:<\/strong> Yeah.<\/p>\n

[00:30:17] Damon Cook:<\/strong> It\u2019s going to get worse before it gets better.<\/p>\n

[00:30:19] Nathan Wrigley:<\/strong> Yes. Well, it\u2019ll be very interesting to see how it all lands. But, what I would encourage everybody to do, I\u2019m going to link to at least three things. I will link to the GitHub repository, which is obviously at Damon\u2019s GitHub account. It\u2019s colorful-tones, and then this is called WP Trend Watcher. I\u2019ll also link to damonacook.com, where there is a blog post about how you can get up and running and what the necessary steps are for you to do that.<\/p>\n

But I will also link to the sort of output, which is again, it\u2019s a GitHub repository, but you can go and see the weekly summaries and what have you, and judge for yourself whether or not this is something that you want to install on your local machine.<\/p>\n

I think the inevitable is going to be that there\u2019s going to be more and more of this in our lives. It remains to be seen whether we have the time to actually interact with the data that it puts out, or we\u2019ll need another layer of AI to cope with the level of AI we\u2019ve got, if you know what I mean. It\u2019ll be wheels within wheels.<\/p>\n

So there you go. Anything you want to add? Did I miss anything there before we wrap it up?<\/p>\n

[00:31:27] Damon Cook:<\/strong> No, the only thing just you know I\u2019m colorful-tones. Actually, it might not be with, it might not have the hyphen, but on X. And then on LinkedIn I try to just share the report out weekly on there just for folks keep up, but that\u2019s about it.<\/p>\n

[00:31:47] Nathan Wrigley:<\/strong> Lovely, in that case, I will endeavor to find your Twitter or X handle and various other bits and pieces. And, wptavern.com, if you search for the episode with Damon Cook. It\u2019s spelt in the way that you might imagine, D-A-M-O-N Cook, C-O-O-K. Search for that. And yeah, thank you so much for chatting to me today, and bravo for a topic which I think I\u2019m going to be leveraging very much for my WordPress news cycle.<\/p>\n

[00:32:14] Damon Cook:<\/strong> We can get that, get some RSS feeds and we can get them, get you hooked up.<\/p>\n

[00:32:18] Nathan Wrigley:<\/strong> Yeah.<\/p>\n

[00:32:18] Damon Cook:<\/strong> You can start generating some other reports.<\/p>\n

[00:32:20] Nathan Wrigley:<\/strong> Okay, great. Yeah, let\u2019s have a chat after we click stop in a moment. Damon Cook, thanks so much for chatting to me today.<\/p>\n

[00:32:26] Damon Cook:<\/strong> Thanks.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/details>\n

On the podcast today we have Damon Cook.<\/p>\n

Damon has been a developer in the WordPress ecosystem for over a decade, working with WordPress-centric agencies and, more recently, running his own freelance business, Noma Digital. He\u2019s a long-time community member, contributor, and someone who remains keenly engaged with the latest WordPress developments, from releases like 7.1 to shifts in plugins, themes, and the broader WordPress landscape.<\/p>\n

Damon joins us today to discuss WP Trend Watcher, an open source tool he created to help WordPress professionals keep up with the ever-increasing deluge of news, community updates, and feature releases. As the WordPress space grows more dynamic, and let\u2019s be honest, sometimes a bit overwhelming, WP Trend Watcher is designed to sift through a fire hose of RSS feeds, summarise the trends, and inject some much-needed human curation into AI-generated content.<\/p>\n

Damon talks about the importance of staying ahead in the WordPress ecosystem, especially for freelancers, agency owners, and developers who want to anticipate changes and support their clients. He gets into the technical nuts and bolts, breaking down how the tool gathers and summarises news, the models and local AI setup he\u2019s experimented with, and the balance between automation and critical human review.<\/p>\n

If you\u2019re someone who struggles to keep up with the relentless pace of WordPress news and wants a smarter way to separate the worthwhile updates from the dross, this episode is for you.<\/p>\n

Useful links<\/h2>\n

Noma Digital<\/a><\/p>\n

Damon on X<\/a><\/p>\n

Damon on LinkedIn<\/a><\/p>\n

WP Trend Watcher on GitHub<\/a><\/p>\n

You Don\u2019t Need a Fancy AI Setup to Stay Current With WordPress<\/a> \u2013 Damons post about why he built WP Trend Watcher and how to install it<\/p>\n

Recent \u201ceditions\u201d of WP Trend Watcher<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Transcript [00:00:19] Nathan Wrigley: Welcome to the Jukebox Podcast from WP Tavern. My name is Nathan Wrigley. Jukebox is a podcast which is dedicated to all things WordPress, the people, the events, the plugins, the blocks, the themes, and in this case a new way to keep up with WordPress news and updates. If you\u2019d […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-13109","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"blog_post_layout_featured_media_urls":{"thumbnail":"","full":""},"categories_names":{"1":{"name":"Uncategorized","link":"https:\/\/4ksamachar.com\/?cat=1"}},"tags_names":[],"comments_number":"0","wpmagazine_modules_lite_featured_media_urls":{"thumbnail":"","cvmm-medium":"","cvmm-medium-plus":"","cvmm-portrait":"","cvmm-medium-square":"","cvmm-large":"","cvmm-small":"","full":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/4ksamachar.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13109","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/4ksamachar.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/4ksamachar.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/4ksamachar.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/4ksamachar.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=13109"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/4ksamachar.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13109\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/4ksamachar.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=13109"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/4ksamachar.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=13109"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/4ksamachar.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=13109"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}