3.8 release adds Quick Draft AI content, OpenAI usage tracking, and security hardening

Classifai 3.8.0 is a substantial update that focuses on two things site owners will notice immediately: faster ways to create AI-generated content, and better controls for keeping AI costs under control. It also bundles in a handful of security improvements and a long list of refinements for developers extending the plugin.

The headline addition is a Content Generation integration with the WordPress Quick Draft widget on your dashboard. Instead of opening the editor every time you want to spin up a new draft, you can now type a prompt directly into Quick Draft and have ClassifAI create a draft post for you in seconds.

What’s new for site owners

• OpenAI usage tracking — A new feature lets you monitor your OpenAI API usage and set both soft thresholds (admin notice) and hard thresholds (notice plus automatic feature disablement) so you don’t blow through your budget unexpectedly.
• Quick Draft AI content — Generate AI-powered draft posts directly from the Quick Draft widget without opening the full editor.
• Editable AI-suggested terms — When using Classification in manual mode, you can now click into any AI-suggested term and tweak the wording before applying it.
• Helper text everywhere — Many settings screens now include inline guidance explaining what each option does, making configuration much less guesswork.
• Faster text-to-speech — Audio generation now runs in the background via Action Scheduler, so saving long posts no longer risks timing out.
• Simpler Ollama setup — The Ollama model dropdown has moved out of the provider configuration into a more intuitive location.

Security and housekeeping

This release includes several security improvements worth noting. A new CredentialObfuscator class hides your private API credentials when they’re rendered in the settings screen, the Watson NLU classification previewer now performs a proper read-post permission check, and helper files have been hardened against direct file access. There are also fixes for Gutenberg deprecation warnings and updates to the WordPress Playground integration following the shutdown of github-proxy.com.

One deprecation to be aware of: the legacy settings screen (the one enabled via the classifai_use_legacy_settings_panel filter) is now formally deprecated and scheduled for removal in a future release. If you’re still using it, an admin notice will prompt you to migrate to the newer React-based settings experience.

For developers

There’s a lot here for anyone extending ClassifAI:

• Credential override filters — New classifai_provider_credentials_{$provider_id} and classifai_provider_credentials filters let you supply credentials from environment variables or a secrets manager instead of the database.
• Provider class helpers — New methods on the Provider class make it easier to fetch all credentials or a specific credential pulled from the broader Feature settings.
• Standardised authentication — Every Provider now exposes an authenticate_credentials method for consistent credential validation.
• Empty credentials allowed — Settings (including credential fields) can now be saved while blank, supporting the new credential filter workflow.
• Filter argument change — Filters that fire during API requests now receive the Feature name rather than the Feature option name; update any custom code that relied on the old value.
• Custom Feature documentation — New docs explain how to extend ClassifAI with your own custom Feature.

Dependencies have also been refreshed, including @wordpress/scripts 31.3.0, @wordpress/env 10.38.0, and bumps to lodash, lodash-es, systeminformation, basic-ftp, immutable, and svgo.

See the full release notes on GitHub. Learn more and download Classifai.