Automattic
Feature Request: Add ability to disable Assistant
What
It'd be nice to be able to disable Assistant.
Why
- It assumes the end user has an active internet connection.
- It requires logging into WP.com, which not everyone wants to do.
- Some people want all data to stay local.
Nothing wrong with keeping it on by default, but something like this should have the option to be disabled.
How
Add a setting? :^)
@tbradsha, the Assistant, similarly to the Sync and Preview tabs, requires logging in with a WordPress.com account. However, if users don't log in, they still can use all other Studio features, also in offline mode.
How would disabling this particular tab help you?
Given it's not a critical feature of the app, it's UI clutter for those that have no plan to use it. Perhaps it uses some extra memory, too. 😄
In general I think AI features should be fully opt-in, with a clear setting to disable them rather than keeping it in some "not quite enabled" state when not logged in, and "enabled in the background but unused" when logged in.
Yes, I disable any UX clutter that I don't use in any program that offers it. If it doesn't offer it, I don't use the program. The likes of VS Code are fully tweakable via extensions and config options, there's no reason why a user shouldn't just be able to flip a boolean as to whether they want to be shown something.
This is especially important when the likes of https://developer.wordpress.com/docs/developer-tools/studio/assistant/ suggests using an LLM to "generate content". Nah, sorry, I'm not a believer in that idea, it's just stomping the accelerator on killing "content" as a whole by worsening the signal-to-noise ratio.
There's good argument to be made that the major appeal of WordPress as a project is in its UNIX philosophy-following thinking in modularity over monolithic in terms of being able to add and remove functionality via plugins. Something like an LLM is definitely something that I wouldn't just disable if I had an option, I would remove entirely as it's yet another avenue for data exfiltration by users who don't know what they're doing with third-party-ran services.
Thanks for the additional feedback @HammyHavoc. I'm a VS Code user myself, so I do think it would be interesting to add more configuration options to Studio in the future, perhaps in the Settings panel. There are many features that the app provides, and more coming in the future, that not every user will want to use.
Hi 👋
https://github.com/babakfp/studio/tree/hide-wpdc
I was going to send a PR, but I couldn't get the tests to pass. There is an issue in src/hooks/use-content-tabs.tsx which I couldn't resolve. Another issue is with the naming of the variables and functions for the option that when renaming it, I messed up the casing.
This is what the PR does
Before:
After:
I'm not really interested in working on this PR because of how slow things are, like tests, running the app, HMR, etc. I sent this here maybe it could be useful.
It would be nice to have discussions tab enabled for this repo, because there is something that I want to talk about. About importing WordPress demos made with the Duplicator plugin.
Thanks.
@babakfp thanks for your suggestion on opening up Discussions. I just enabled it. And thanks for working on the PR to remove WordPress.com functionality. It's not something that we would include in the app at this time, but I appreciate you creating it for anyone else who wants to use your fork of Studio.