Elpino Chat — WordPress plugin

Connects a WordPress site to Elpino's AI-powered live chat: one click to link a workspace, and the widget shows up on the live site. Optionally verifies logged-in WordPress users' identity, so the AI can look up their own account instead of chatting with them as a stranger.

Folder layout

elpino-chat.php              Bootstrap only: constants, hooks, requires.
                              No HTML, no business logic — if you're adding
                              either, it almost certainly belongs elsewhere.

includes/
  settings-page.php           The "Elpino Chat" admin page: handles the
                               connect/disconnect callbacks, then includes a
                               view for the markup.
  identity.php                Identity verification: the HS256 JWT signer
                               and the WordPress-user-to-token mapping.
  widget.php                  Injects the widget (tag.js) and identify()
                               call on wp_footer, for the live site.
  cache.php                   Best-effort page-cache-plugin flush after
                               connecting.

views/
  connect.php                 "Not connected yet" screen.
  connected.php                Connected dashboard (Inbox/Settings links,
                               disconnect).
  identity-settings.php        The identity verification form.

assets/
  style.css                    All admin-page styling. Views only ever use
                               classes from here — no inline styles.
  icon.png                     Plugin icon (shown on its own settings page
                               and used for the wordpress.org listing).

Local development

Point the plugin at a local Elpino dev server instead of production by adding this to wp-config.php, above the require_once ABSPATH . 'wp-settings.php'; line:

define('ELPINO_APP_URL', 'http://localhost:3000');

With that set, the widget loader also automatically falls back to the dev server's own /tag.js instead of production's CDN (cdn.elpino.chat), since a site created against a local database wouldn't exist in production's.

Design notes / why things are the way they are

• Connect flow is nonce-signed. The return_url handed to /connect/wordpress carries a WordPress nonce (elpino_connect); the callback in settings-page.php refuses to accept ?elpino_website_id= without it. Prevents an admin being tricked into clicking a crafted link that repoints their widget. Same protection the official Crisp WordPress plugin uses for its own callback.
• The disconnect redirect runs on admin_init, not inside the page callback. By the time elpino_settings_page() renders, WordPress has already sent the admin page's headers — a real wp_safe_redirect() from there would just warn and fail silently.
• No Composer dependency for JWT signing. identity.php hand-rolls the HS256 JWT (header/payload/HMAC, base64url) instead of requiring firebase/php-jwt, since a WordPress plugin can't assume composer install has ever run on the host. It produces the exact same token shape as the Node.js SDK (web/public/sdk/elpino-server.mjs).
• The widget itself is the same tag.js every other Elpino customer embeds (see web/app/components/SiteWidgetTag.tsx), not a bespoke loader — it already handles resizing, the launcher, and visitor identity, so this plugin doesn't carry its own copy to keep in sync.

Publishing to wordpress.org

Not done yet. Needs: a languages/ .pot file (run wp i18n make-pot . or similar once there's a working WP-CLI environment), the assets/ banner and screenshot images the wordpress.org listing uses (separate from the in-plugin assets/icon.png above — those live in the SVN assets/ at the repo root, not inside the plugin zip), and a developer account + SVN submission through https://wordpress.org/plugins/developers/add/.