Ability category slugs use slash separators rejected by WP core (causes ~30 _doingItWrong notices on init)

[chubes4]

Summary

DataMachineEvents\Abilities\AbilityCategories registers four category slugs that contain / separators:

public const EVENTS   = 'datamachine-events/events';
public const VENUES   = 'datamachine-events/venues';
public const TESTING  = 'datamachine-events/testing';
public const SETTINGS = 'datamachine-events/settings';

WordPress 6.9 core rejects these because WP_Ability_Categories_Registry::register() validates the slug against this regex:

/^[a-z0-9]+(?:-[a-z0-9]+)*$/

— which only allows lowercase alphanumerics and dashes. Slashes are not permitted. The category registrations silently fail, then every ability that tries to assign one of these categories fires a second _doingItWrong because the category "is not registered."

Source: wp-includes/abilities-api/class-wp-ability-categories-registry.php line 68.

Symptoms

On every site init, wp-content/debug.log fills with ~30 PHP notices:

[25-Apr-2026 14:33:40 UTC] PHP Notice:  Function WP_Ability_Categories_Registry::register was called incorrectly.
  Ability category slug must contain only lowercase alphanumeric characters and dashes.
  (in version 6.9.0)

[25-Apr-2026 14:33:40 UTC] PHP Notice:  Function WP_Abilities_Registry::register was called incorrectly.
  Ability category "datamachine-events/events" is not registered.
  Please register the ability category before assigning it to ability "data-machine-events/query-events".

The pattern repeats once per category (4 times) plus once per ability that references one (~25+ abilities), totaling ~30 notices per request.

Verified live on extrachill.com (data-machine-events v0.30.0, WordPress 6.9, PHP 8.4).

Functional impact

Beyond log noise, abilities are registered without a category. Means:

• Abilities don't appear under their intended category in the chat agent UI
• wp datamachine abilities list --category=datamachine-events/events returns empty
• Permission filters keyed on category may not match
• Discovery/grouping features that expect categorized abilities silently degrade

Root cause

Slug values mix two separators — data-machine-events (kebab) for the plugin namespace, then / for the sub-category. WP core's slug grammar doesn't support that. The pattern probably came from a misreading of how DM core ability slugs work (those allow / because they're full ability identifiers like datamachine/render-image-template, registered through a different code path that doesn't use the kebab regex).

Worth noting that DM core itself uses slash-separated ability slugs everywhere (datamachine/render-image-template, datamachine/run-flow) and those work fine. But ability categories are a separate registry with stricter slug validation.

Suggested fix

Replace / with - in the four category slugs:

public const EVENTS   = 'datamachine-events-events';      // or just 'events'
public const VENUES   = 'datamachine-events-venues';      // or just 'venues'
public const TESTING  = 'datamachine-events-testing';
public const SETTINGS = 'datamachine-events-settings';

…then bulk-update every 'category' => 'datamachine-events/...' reference across inc/Abilities/*.php. About 25–30 call sites — a single sed pass plus visual review. Drop-in compatible, no behavior change beyond categories actually getting registered this time.

Related

• Discovered while migrating SlideGenerator → WeeklyRoundupSlideTemplate (Migrate Calendar and EventsMap blocks to @extrachill/api-client #64). The notice flood obscured a real Ability "data-machine-events/query-events" not found error during testing because the abilities never registered properly under their category.
• Pre-existing in v0.29.4. Not introduced by recent brand tokens or OG card work.
• Cosmetic in production (just notices, not errors), but pollutes debug.log and makes signal-to-noise on real errors worse.