The WordPress Contributor Toolkit is a desktop Electron application (macOS on Apple Silicon, Windows, and Linux) that sets up a full WordPress core development environment with zero prerequisites — no Git, Node.js, npm or Docker on the host.

One of the most common complaints from Contributor Day facilitators is this: participants spend the entire session trying to set up their local environment and never get to actually contribute.

Before writing a single line of code, a first-time WordPress core contributor typically needs to install Git, Node.js, npm, Docker, configure everything correctly, and troubleshoot whatever breaks along the way. At in-person events, this alone can take hours — sometimes the full day.

The WordPress Core Dev Environment Toolkit aims to eliminate this friction entirely.

The user guide lives at https://wordpress.github.io/contributor-toolkit/ — installing the app, creating a site, working on a Trac ticket, applying patches and PRs, and submitting your changes as a pull request, a Trac attachment, or a patch for a mentor. What follows here is only what a contributor to this repository needs.

Here’s the full setup flow — from a fresh install to a running WordPress development environment:

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Once your environment is running, generating a patch to submit to Trac takes just a few clicks:

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Download the latest packaged build from the Releases page and follow Getting started in the user guide — it covers picking the right file per platform, the macOS Gatekeeper notes, and the first-contribution walkthrough.

Requirements: a recent Node.js to build the Electron app itself (runtime for the app is bundled).

npm install
npm start            # run Electron + renderer in watch mode

# Package installers (no publishing):
npm run dist         # all configured targets
npm run dist:win     # Windows (x64 by default)
npm run dist:win:arm64

The renderer is bundled by esbuild into src/renderer/index.js and index.css. Those are generated files, are not committed, and are rebuilt by npm install, npm start and every npm run dist — so there is no bundling step to remember after changing src/renderer/index.jsx. npm run build:once still exists if you want to rebuild on its own.

Output goes to dist/. On Linux, npm run dist creates AppImage, Snap, and DEB packages. macOS packages use the build machine's architecture, and the published macOS builds currently target Apple Silicon (arm64) only.

This app uses the official WordPress “W mark” as its icon.

• Source SVG: build/wordpress-wmark.svg
• Packaged icons: build/icon.icns (macOS), build/icon.png (Linux), build/icon.ico (Windows)

Electron Builder picks these up via build configuration in package.json.

How the app works from a user's point of view — the toolchain it bundles, keeping a site up to date with trunk, what SQLite does and doesn't cover — is documented in the user guide, not here.

• WordPress core relies on Node.js, npm, and webpack for its build system. Electron is an easy way to install Node.js on all major platforms.
• It's a single, self-contained file. It's easy to distribute and install – it can be distributed on a USB sticks if everything else fails.

• Integrate Playground's XDebug.
• Explore bundling MySQL server with the app.
• Migrate to the PHP Git client in https://github.com/wordpress/php-toolkit.
• Potentially integrate with Studio to benefit from PHP version selector, wp-cli integration and other Studio features.
• An ergonomic way of managing the git repository from the UI (commit, conflicts, pushes etc.) Or would it make sense to just endorse another git client?

Release downloads are the only usage signal this project has, and GitHub keeps no history of them, so a weekly workflow records the counts to a metrics branch. See STATS.md for how to read them and what they do and don't measure.

Much of the work here happens with the support of AI coding agents, and the quality bar is held by a set of guardrails rather than by trusting the agent. See CONTRIBUTING.md for what runs on every pull request (repo-wide lint, unit tests on macOS and Windows) and the single review standard to run yourself before opening one — as the /self-review skill in Claude Code, or by following the standard directly on any other agent.

GPLv2 or later. See LICENSE.