Consider using WordPress Playground

[swissspidy]

Would be faster to boot up than @wordpress/env.

If it supports all our needs (install additional languages, WP-CLI access, no timeouts, etc.), then it could be an interesting option.

Our existing configuration steps would then need to be moved to a blueprint I suppose.

We could then also support loading (merging?) a plugin's custom blueprint for more elaborate runtime checks.

[swissspidy]

See swissspidy/wp-performance-action#173 and swissspidy/compare-wp-performance#17 for inspiration.

We could then also support loading (merging?) a plugin's custom blueprint for more elaborate runtime checks.

Question is whether runtime checks work in the first place.

If there are issues with creating the separate db tables etc. then maybe PCP itself could be updated to allow opting into a mode where no separate tables are created.

[swissspidy]

See also: https://konstantin.obenland.it/2026/05/05/plugin-check-with-playground-cli/

[swissspidy]

^ From the above:

{
  "steps": [
    {"step": "installPlugin", "pluginData": {"resource": "wordpress.org/plugins", "slug": "plugin-check"}},
    {"step": "wp-cli", "command": "wp plugin activate plugin-check my-plugin"},
    {"step": "cp",
      "fromPath": "/wordpress/wp-content/plugins/plugin-check/drop-ins/object-cache.copy.php",
      "toPath": "/wordpress/wp-content/object-cache.php"}
  ]
}

npx @wp-playground/cli php \
  --blueprint=blueprint.json \
  --mount=/path/to/my-plugin:/wordpress/wp-content/plugins/my-plugin \
  --quiet \
  -- /tmp/wp-cli.phar plugin check my-plugin \
  --categories=plugin_repo --format=json \
  --error-severity=7 --warning-severity=6 \
  --include-low-severity-errors --exclude-checks=prefixing