Manage Pagelayer with AI

What we learned testing it

Behavior the ability descriptions do not mention.

• Pagelayer's AI abilities keep their own copy of each page's layout. Pages built in Pagelayer's editor come back empty to them, so the recipes change only the draft they just built and check other pages as visitors see them. By Pagelayer's code, saves from its editor (or the block editor, or any other plugin) never update that copy, and in our tests the next AI change brought back the older layout: changed text, a deleted row and a changed color all came back. Once a page is edited outside the AI, keep making changes there. That is why our recipes only build new drafts and check pages; they do not edit existing ones.
• Pagelayer saves each element change to the page at once, so on a published page visitors see edits as they happen. The landing page recipe only changes its own draft, so nothing reaches visitors until you publish; the check recipe changes nothing.
• Create Page publishes unless it is told otherwise, and it can also set the site-wide colors and fonts. The recipes always save drafts and leave your site's styles alone.
• Pagelayer's own image search needs a Pexels API key in its settings. Without one, the recipes find photos with WPVibe, add them to your media library and give Pagelayer the media item: an image given by its address showed empty alt text on the live page in our test.
• Header and footer templates always get the Full Site display rule, and on a theme that is not Pagelayer's own they replaced the theme's header and footer in our test. The free plugin has no menu widget, so a Pagelayer header has no navigation. No recipe builds one.
• Create Website always sets your site name, makes its first page the home page when the site shows latest posts, and in our test reused an unrelated existing menu. Creating a menu with an existing menu's name replaces that menu's items.
• Imported library sections skip Pagelayer's quality rules: in our test they brought lorem ipsum text, one printed raw shortcode text for a widget the free plugin lacks, and the AI could not see the section in the page outline afterwards. The recipes build sections from Pagelayer's presets instead.
• A straight double quote in any text the AI sends, such as a testimonial wrapped in quote marks, breaks that widget on the live page, and so does a backslash: in our tests a button lost its text and link and a feature card lost its heading, and Pagelayer's validator still passed. The recipes use curly quotes and no backslashes.
• Updating global colors replaces the whole palette, so colors you leave out are dropped. Change Styles accepts setting names that do not exist without an error, so the recipes use Update Element on settings the element already has.
• Deleting pages, posts, templates and menus runs straight away: Pagelayer does not mark these abilities as destructive, so WPVibe's approval step never shows. Templates and menus are deleted for good; pages and posts go to the trash unless the AI asks for a permanent delete.