About this plugin
Creator Assistant Search is an add-on for Creator Assistant – Hub that brings AI-powered search to your WordPress site. When a visitor performs a search, the plugin retrieves the most semantically relevant content from your Qdrant vector database and generates a concise AI Overview (displayed at the top of the search results page) using OpenAI’s chat models.
How it works
- When a search query is submitted, the plugin converts it into a vector embedding via the Hub and queries your Qdrant collection for the most relevant content chunks.
- The matching chunks are assembled into a prompt and sent to the OpenAI Chat API to generate a short, direct answer.
- The answer is streamed progressively to the browser and displayed as an AI Overview panel above your search results, in both block themes and classic themes. Subsequent searches for the same query return the cached result instantly.
Key features
- AI Overview panel: a concise AI-generated answer appears at the top of every search results page, based exclusively on your own site content.
- Semantic search: results are ranked by semantic relevance (vector similarity) rather than keyword matching alone.
- Block theme and classic theme support: the AI Overview is injected via the render_block_core/query filter in block themes, and via the loop_start action in classic themes.
- Animated UI: the overview uses the Hub’s animated border component and the typed-text effect for a modern look.
- Source attribution: the panel lists the source posts used to generate the answer.
- Language-aware: the AI response is generated in the language of your site.
- Color scheme: choose between automatic (follows system preference), light, or dark mode for the AI Overview panel from the WordPress Customizer ( Appearance → Customize → AI Overview ).
- Streaming response: the AI answer is delivered via Server-Sent Events and typed progressively into the panel, with no page reload required.
- Customizable prompt: from Creator Assistant → Search, use the default prompt, add your own instructions to it, or replace it entirely. The prompt actually in use is always shown on the page.
- Two kinds of answer: the AI answers the question directly when your content contains the answer, and otherwise explains briefly what it found, so a search for recipes or guides does not get a made-up definitive answer.
- Shortcode and block: turn off the automatic insertion and place the panel yourself, with the “AI Overview” block in the Search template of a block theme, or the [creator_assistant_search_ai_overview] shortcode in search.php of a classic theme. Both render exactly the same panel.
- Extensible: exposes filters and actions so other add-ons can customise the sources list, script data, prompt context, and the prompt itself block by block.
Requirements
- Creator Assistant – Hub 1.1.0 or higher, with OpenAI and Qdrant configured and at least one vectorizer active. The settings page uses the shared tab renderer the Hub publishes since 1.0.2, and the menu order uses the filter it adds in 1.1.0, so update the Hub first: WordPress cannot express a minimum version in Requires Plugins.
- WordPress 6.8 or higher.
- PHP 7.4 or higher.
External services
This plugin sends data to OpenAI to generate the AI Overview shown on your search results page. By using this plugin you agree to OpenAI’s terms and privacy policy.
- OpenAI: when a visitor performs a search, the matching content chunks retrieved from your Qdrant database (via Creator Assistant – Hub) are assembled into a prompt together with the visitor’s search term and sent to the OpenAI Responses API to generate the AI Overview answer.
- Service: https://platform.openai.com/
- Privacy Policy: https://openai.com/policies/privacy-policy
- Terms of Use: https://openai.com/policies/terms-of-use
This plugin relies on Creator Assistant – Hub for the OpenAI embeddings and Qdrant vector-search connections used to find relevant content for each query. See the Hub’s own “External services” section for details on that part of the data flow.
Data is only sent to OpenAI when a visitor performs a search on your site. Nothing is transmitted automatically upon activation.
Development
The source files for all compiled assets are included in the plugin under assets/src/ (front-end JS and CSS) and src/ (block editor).
js (includes npm).
- Install dependencies: npm install
- Build everything: npm run build
- JS only: npm run build:js (uses esbuild )
- CSS only: npm run build:css (uses PostCSS + Sass)
- Block editor only: npm run build:editor (uses @wordpress/scripts )
- Watch during development: npm run watch for JS and CSS, npm run start:editor for the block.
- Run the test suite: composer install, then npm test (PHPUnit with WordPress stubs, no database required).
Source JS files are in assets/src/js/ and compiled to assets/dist/js/.
Source CSS/SCSS files are in assets/src/css/ and compiled to assets/dist/css/.
Block sources are in src/blocks/ and compiled to build/blocks/.