It was a morning in April, and everything looked like it was going to be a normal day. I would keep working on internal tools at Automattic, because my current role is Applied AI Engineer. We build internal tools that push our internal workflows to the max (The amazing HAL team, Lead by Sirin Odrowski). We build a framework to create workflows that is really impressive, and it lets us do amazing things inside Automattic, but it’s proprietary software, only for internal use.
But no, it was not a normal morning. Matt Mullenweg had just announced “RSM” (Radical Speed Month). (For more information, you can read this great article from The Repository: Automattic’s Radical Speed Month Wraps Up)
I panicked, and for a couple of days my head was full of ideas, but none of them felt “big” enough to fill an entire month (yes, I still have other ideas waiting, don’t worry :D). In the end I decided to go for something else: rebuilding wp-admin, after more than 10 years without a real change.
Do you know how it all started? By asking for help, almost desperately, from a coworker 😀 My vision didn’t seem to match what others expected, and my colleagues couldn’t quite see the genius of the idea: recreating an operating system while keeping WordPress’s core strength, its extensibility and its plugin ecosystem. Treating plugins as apps, not as “extensions.” A real window system. Maybe my coworkers saw it as too ambitious, and since “word of mouth” wasn’t working for me, I built the first prototype in just 3 days (and nights).
When you believe in your product, when you feel that excitement, and you know deep down that it’s something great, nothing can stop you.
I’m a WordPress developer, I know PHP, and I know many other languages after more than 20 years as an engineer and 10 years as an enthusiast (I started programming my own video games when I was only 10 years old). But I had never built a plugin or a theme before, and I started with a plugin that would eventually reach more than 100,000 lines of code 🙂
The Alcazaba Project (Desktop Mode)
What came next were HOURS and HOURS of excitement. I wouldn’t even call it “programming,” because every line of code felt like a small joy, and every proof of concept that worked gave me a feeling I can’t really describe.
And all of this… thanks to AI tools (I even spent $2,000 in just a couple of hours).
The idea-pitching period was coming to an end, and Matt suggested that projects should be built in pairs. My fear kept growing, but my idea was already quite advanced, so I published the demo that would convince Matt, deciding the fate of Desktop Mode. I worked day and night, and after many hours without rest, I recorded a video of myself explaining what I had built, trying to find a partner who could help me carry out my vision.
I published the demo, and deep inside I knew it was going to cause a stir. But I decided to clear my mind, so I walked down to the market, five minutes from my house, to buy a few things and get something to eat.
And that’s exactly what happened: the reaction was real. Matt messaged me directly to set up a call, and without thinking twice I just told him I was out shopping 😀
Ten minutes later, after a short interview, Matt gave us the green light.
By the way, that demo caught the attention of many developers, including Roberto Aranda. In the end, I chose him to join the project, mostly because we already knew each other, we had worked together before at another company.
That’s the story of how Desktop Mode started. But stay tuned, because in the next article I’ll tell you how I wrote the very first lines of code. And it started SIMPLY, with a plugin that only showed a button in wp-admin 🙂