I’ve spent a lot of time thinking about the work that surrounds a WordPress build: discovery, review, sign-off, handoff. That’s where projects gain or lose time, and it’s where we tend to lean on our least interesting tools. A shared doc. A PDF. An email thread that ends with “looks good.”
I think that’s about to change. Interactive, engaging mini-apps are the next evolution of agency work with WordPress. Picture a questionnaire that shows a client their design direction as they answer, a project tracker that asks how they’re feeling, or a quote calculator that updates with every choice. Each of those used to be a small development project, so we skipped them. Now an AI agent can build one in an afternoon, and that makes an agency more nimble. You can answer a client’s question with a working tool instead of a meeting.
WordPress stays at the center of the build. These tools work around it, and all they need is a place to live. That’s where Spacefast comes in. It’s Automattic’s publishing platform for things AI agents make. You build something in a chat with Claude or ChatGPT, or push it from git, and it goes live at a private link you choose who can see.
Here are eleven ways I’d use it, roughly in the order a project unfolds. I built five as working samples you can click through.
1. Client discovery: a design direction questionnaire
“Clean and modern” describes almost every website, and design preferences are hard to put into words on a kickoff call. So I built a questionnaire where the client makes choices instead: headline styles side by side, a palette picker, a button studio, imagery shown as rough layouts, and the same welcome message written six ways.
At the end, the client sees a design direction with a type pairing and a sample homepage in the colors they picked. You get a summary to paste into the project thread. The questions come from the discovery section of the Special Projects team’s open project handbook, which they use live on kickoff calls. I turned them into an async version a client can finish on their own time.
You can try it yourself. It makes the first part of discovery async. Clients finish it on their own time, so the kickoff call doesn’t have to spend an hour on colors, type, and tone. That leaves the real call for the higher-order conversations: strategy and architecture.
2. Intake and onboarding
A step-by-step page can collect what you’d otherwise chase over email: logins, brand files, page lists, and who approves what. The questionnaire can be step one.
3. Brief review, comments, and sign-off
Briefs usually get approved with a reply that says “looks good.” Weeks later, nobody agrees on what “good” covered.
Publish the brief as a private page instead. The client comments on the exact section they want changed, you answer in the thread, and version history shows how the brief moved between rounds. At the bottom, a sign-off records a name, date, and version. It’s a working record, and I’d still let your contract govern the engagement.
Here’s a sample brief for a fictional bakery. Try the sign-off.
4. Prototypes clients can click
A static mockup asks a client to imagine the site. A prototype lets them use it: real navigation, hover states, a mobile menu. Build the homepage in two directions, send each as its own link, and let the client react to the experience.
My bakery homepage concepts show one fictional bakery two ways, a warm hand-made look and a loud poster look. Both use identical words and menus, so the only thing you’re judging is the design.
5. High-fidelity wireframes
Does the filter make sense with forty items? What happens to the navigation on a phone? A wireframe with a working menu or form answers those in a meeting instead of in QA.
6. Design review with comments on the page
Clients comment on the element they mean, and the thread keeps its context. “Make the header bigger” attaches to the header. The link stays the same when you republish, and version history lets you go back a round. That’s one place for feedback instead of email, screenshots, and chat.
7. Branch previews for design decisions
If your team works in git, feature branches get their own preview links. Deciding between two directions? Put each on a branch and send both links. It’s a lighter alternative to staging for front-end decisions.
8. A private project tracker for each client
Clients ask the same things all project long: where are we, what’s next, what do you need from me? Give each client their own Space with a timeline, a list of what’s waiting on them, and recent updates in plain language. Each Space has its own access list, so one client never sees another’s project. It can replace the weekly status meeting, because the client checks in on their own time and the calls you do hold can be about the work.
My favorite piece is the project pulse: one tap where the client says going well, some concerns, or worried. A status report tells you how the schedule is going. One tap tells you how the client is feeling about the project. See it in the sample tracker.
9. Documentation and help centers
A “how to edit your site” guide goes stale the moment the site changes. A small help center per client stays current because updating it takes a minute and the link never changes. The OpenStation docs are published on Spacefast, which shows the pattern works. A client-specific version is the same idea, kept private.
10. Companion apps next to a WordPress site
Some client needs sit beside the content and don’t belong inside it: a quote calculator, a product configurator, an event check-in, a resource finder. Spacefast supports full-stack apps with a database and email, so a small tool doesn’t need its own hosting.
I built the cake quote calculator. Pick a size, flavor, and date, and the estimate updates, including a rush fee. It’s the one sample that serves the client’s customers, which makes it the easiest to sell.
11. Audits and proposals that stay current
A PDF audit goes stale the day you send it. A page with findings and a checklist can update as work progresses, with comments attached to the line items a client wants to discuss.
And so much more
The eleven above are where I’d start. The list doesn’t stop there, because the limit is what you can imagine and the agent does the building. A few more:
- Product marketing landing pages for clients
- Promotional and campaign landing pages
- Simple event RSVPs with a live headcount
- Waitlists and launch-day “coming soon” pages
- Client portals with files, invoices, and approvals
- Menus, price lists, and rate cards that update in a minute
- Team directories and onboarding guides
- Photo galleries and portfolios for proofing
- Surveys, polls, and post-launch feedback forms
- Calculators, quizzes, and lead magnets
- Internal dashboards for your own agency
A home for the site itself
Spacefast can host the site too. Point a Space at a public WordPress site, and the build reads your content over the REST API and publishes it as a static site. You keep writing in WordPress; the public site is fast, simple HTML. It runs through a connected Git repository, so you’ll need one for the Space. The WordPress data sources guide walks through the setup.
Where this is going
I think this is the layer agencies have been missing. The build is only part of the work; the rest is discovery, review, handoff, and the small tools clients keep asking for, and an agent can now make each of those in an afternoon. Spacefast is in research preview and moving fast, and my samples are demos, so test the database, email, and access pieces on a real project before you promise them to a client. The pricing starts free. The docs and the agent setup guide will get you publishing in minutes.
Try it on one project
Pick your next client project and use Spacefast for one piece, like the questionnaire or the brief review. Leave everything else alone and see what changes.
Which part of your agency’s process would you try it on first?
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