FieldPilot – AI & JSON Copilot for ACF

Description

Advanced Custom Fields has not changed how you author fields in a decade: you click
through a UI, one field at a time. Meanwhile every developer has an AI that writes
JSON perfectly well. The missing piece was never generation – it was safe
application.

FieldPilot is an AI & JSON Copilot and configuration patch engine for ACF. Paste JSON, see exactly
what will change, apply only that, and roll back if you were wrong.

The rule the whole plugin is built around:

Nothing changes except what the JSON asked for.

Set one field to required and that is the only byte that moves. Instructions,
conditional logic, wrapper classes, field keys and every other field in the group
come out byte-identical.

What it does

• Partial updates. Change one setting on one field. ACF’s own importer can only
  replace a whole field group; this changes precisely what you named.
• Diff preview. Every change is shown before anything is written – added,
  removed, moved, and every setting that differs, old value to new.
• Target Isolation & Sibling Protection. Target any node in a nested ACF tree
  (Repeater subfield, Flexible Content layout) with guarantees that sibling branches
  are untouched.
• Conflict detection. Changing a field’s type, renaming a field that holds
  content, deleting something with data in it – each stops and asks, with the
  trade-offs spelled out. It never guesses.
• Snapshot and rollback. Every batch is snapshotted with its complete field tree.
  One click restores the exact prior configuration. If a write fails verification,
  it rolls back automatically.
• Interactive Custom Field Builder (All 4 ACF Tabs). Dynamic controls for General,
  Validation, Presentation, and Conditional Logic across all 36 ACF field types with
  responsive width, return formats, choices, sub-fields, layouts, and bulk appending.
• Deep 4-Tab Settings Mapping. Full parameter mapping for General, Validation,
  Presentation, and Conditional Logic across all 36 ACF field types.
• Deep nesting. Groups, Repeaters, Flexible Content layouts and Clone fields,
  at any depth, targeted by human path: ["Agent", "Contact", "Social"].
• Reads sloppy JSON. AI output uses group for field_group, description for
  instructions, true where ACF wants 1. All of it is normalised rather than
  rejected, so you paste instead of hand-fixing.
• Reads native ACF exports too, in both directions.
• REST API and WP-CLI with full parity, so deployments can do everything the UI
  can.
• Knows what it cannot touch. Field groups registered in PHP, or loaded from
  acf-json and not yet synced, are physically unpatchable. The plugin detects them
  up front and says so, instead of silently writing orphaned rows.

AI, without an AI dependency

The plugin never calls a language model. It publishes a schema and generates a
ready-to-paste prompt – including your field group’s current structure, so the model
stops inventing field names – and you use whatever AI you already pay for.

No API keys. No per-seat model cost. No site data leaving your server. No vendor to
be locked to. It works fully with zero configuration, and it keeps working when a
provider changes its pricing.

Requirements

WordPress 6.5+, PHP 8.1+, ACF 6.2+ (free or PRO). On ACF 6.8+ payloads are validated
against ACF’s own shipped field-type schemas, so validation tracks ACF automatically.
Repeater, Flexible Content, Clone and Gallery require ACF PRO; payloads using them on
a free install are refused with a clear message rather than a cryptic error.

Technical details