WP PHPStan

When to use

Use this skill when working on PHPStan in a WordPress codebase, for example:

• setting up or updating phpstan.neon / phpstan.neon.dist
• generating or updating phpstan-baseline.neon
• fixing PHPStan errors via WordPress-friendly PHPDoc (REST requests, hooks, query results)
• handling third-party plugin/theme classes safely (stubs/autoload/targeted ignores)

Inputs required

• wp-project-triage output (run first if you haven't)
• Whether adding/updating Composer dev dependencies is allowed (stubs).
• Whether changing the baseline is allowed for this task.

Procedure

0) Discover PHPStan entrypoints (deterministic)

1. Inspect PHPStan setup (config, baseline, scripts):
   • node skills/wp-phpstan/scripts/phpstan_inspect.mjs

Prefer the repo’s existing composer script (e.g. composer run phpstan) when present.

1) Ensure WordPress core stubs are loaded

szepeviktor/phpstan-wordpress or php-stubs/wordpress-stubs are effectively required for most WordPress plugin/theme repos. Without it, expect a high volume of errors about unknown WordPress core functions.

• Confirm the package is installed (see composer.dependencies in the inspect report).
• Ensure the PHPStan config references the stubs (see references/third-party-classes.md).

2) Ensure a sane phpstan.neon for WordPress projects

• Keep paths focused on first-party code (plugin/theme directories).
• Exclude generated and vendored code (vendor/, node_modules/, build artifacts, tests unless explicitly analyzed).
• Keep ignoreErrors entries narrow and documented.

See:

• references/configuration.md

3) Fix errors with WordPress-specific typing (preferred)

Prefer correcting types over ignoring errors. Common WP patterns that need help: