Explore WooCommerce support for Studio site generation

[chubes4]

Problem

Studio site generation does not currently have a dedicated WooCommerce-aware path.

On Studio trunk, site generation is based on the agent creating WordPress/block output directly. It does not currently provision WooCommerce, seed products, create store pages, or validate shop/cart/checkout behavior as a first-class generation workflow.

If a user asks Studio to build a shop, store, product catalog, cart, checkout flow, or ecommerce site, Studio should eventually be able to produce a real WooCommerce-backed local site rather than a visually plausible generic site.

Current state

• Studio trunk does not use Static Site Importer for site generation.
• The current mainline generation path uses agent-authored WordPress/block output.
• Static Site Importer is being explored separately in the Studio SSI draft PR / bfb-mu-plugin-agent-output-draft branch as an experimental local site-generation substrate.
• My intended exploration path for WooCommerce support is to stack a future draft experiment on top of that SSI draft branch after the non-commerce import loop is more stable.
• The related importer/conversion/benchmark repos are listed in the Links section below.

WooCommerce currently appears only incidentally in generic tooling examples, such as WP-CLI plugin installation. There is no first-class WooCommerce site-generation workflow.

Proposed direction

Explore WooCommerce-aware site generation as a future draft experiment stacked on the Studio SSI draft branch.

The shape I want to explore:

User asks for a shop/store/products/cart/checkout
  -> Studio detects commerce intent
  -> Studio provisions WooCommerce for the local site
  -> Generation captures page design plus structured product data
  -> Static Site Importer imports the design and seeds WooCommerce products
  -> Product grid/cart/checkout regions become WooCommerce-native where feasible
  -> Benchmarks validate WooCommerce state, pages, blocks, and frontend behavior

The important product direction is that the user request stays natural. The system should turn the generated store concept into WordPress/WooCommerce-native data and pages through the generation/import substrate.

Potential areas of work

Studio

• Commerce intent detection.
• WooCommerce install/activation/provisioning for local generated sites.
• A generation/import mode that knows a store is being created.

Static Site Importer draft branch

• A structured product data contract, such as products, categories, prices, descriptions, and images.
• Product seeding into WooCommerce.
• Mapping high-confidence product grids/cards/CTAs to WooCommerce-native blocks or pages.
• Store-specific import diagnostics.

Conversion substrate

• Recognition of common product-card/product-grid/cart/checkout static HTML patterns.
• WooCommerce-aware block or placeholder mapping where the importer has product data.

Validation/benchmarking

• WooCommerce is active.
• Products are created with expected data.
• Shop/cart/checkout pages render.
• Product links work.
• Blocks validate cleanly.
• Visual and semantic fidelity remain acceptable.

Acceptance criteria for a draft experiment

• A prompt like "build a small online shop" creates a local WordPress site with WooCommerce active.
• The result includes real WooCommerce products, not just static product cards.
• Shop, cart, checkout, and product views render without block validation errors.
• The non-commerce generation path remains unaffected.

Notes

This is intentionally exploratory. The issue tracks a future WooCommerce site-generation capability and names the Studio SSI draft branch as the likely experimental base. It does not claim that Static Site Importer is the current Studio trunk generation path.

Links

• Studio SSI draft PR: Experiment: use Static Site Importer for generated local sites #3309
• Static Site Importer: https://github.com/chubes4/static-site-importer
• Block Format Bridge: https://github.com/chubes4/block-format-bridge
• HTML to Blocks Converter: https://github.com/chubes4/html-to-blocks-converter
• Homeboy Studio rigs: https://github.com/chubes4/homeboy-rigs/tree/main/Automattic/studio

AI assistance

• AI assistance: Yes
• Tool(s): OpenCode (gpt-5.5)
• Used for: Revising the issue framing and link structure based on Chris's correction; Chris remains responsible for review and prioritization.