BatchPilot

BatchPilot is a single plugin that replaces the usual stack of bulk-delete, bulk-edit, and duplicate-post plugins. Every action is previewed before it runs, can be undone, and is recorded in a history log you can re-run.

Three operations on posts, pages, and any registered public post type:

• Delete. Trash by default, with a separate permanent option.
• Duplicate. Copies meta, taxonomies, featured image, and optionally child posts.
• Bulk edit. Change status, author, publish dates, taxonomies, password, comment status, or menu order.

Twelve filters narrow the matching set: post type, status, author, date ranges (modified, published), taxonomy terms, has comments, has featured image, parent, children.

Four ways to drive it:

• Admin UI. Stepper-driven Operations Builder with live preview.
• WP-CLI. wp batchpilot delete, duplicate, edit, history, undo, doctor.
• REST API. /wp-json/batchpilot/v1/* endpoints with capability-gated permissions.
• WordPress Abilities API. Each Target × Operation pair is exposed as a registered ability so AI agents and other clients can drive operations.

Safety features:

• Every operation is previewed (count plus sample rows) before it runs.
• Preview tokens (HMAC-signed, 5-minute TTL) prevent stale state from being executed.
• Snapshots are written before mutation so Undo restores the previous state.
• Operations over a configurable threshold (default 100 items) run in the background via Action Scheduler.
• Per-operation capabilities: batchpilot_delete, batchpilot_edit, batchpilot_duplicate, batchpilot_move, batchpilot_schedule. Grant per-role or per-user.

Use cases:

• Trash old drafts, auto-drafts, or revisions on a schedule.
• Re-attribute posts from a departing author.
• Shift publish dates on a backlog.
• Add or remove taxonomy terms across a content set.
• Duplicate templates or landing pages.

Development

Source code, including the un-minified JavaScript sources for the admin app, lives at https://github.com/jgalea/batchpilot

The compiled assets in assets/build/ are generated with @wordpress/scripts from the sources in assets/src/. To rebuild:

npm install && npm run build

PHP dependencies are managed with Composer (composer install).