DEV3 AI Comment & Community Moderator for WordPress

WordPress plugin: one moderation queue for comments, WooCommerce reviews and bbPress, with local rules plus Google Gemini API labels for spam, toxicity, harassment, off-topic and personal data. The AI can hold or spam, never approve or delete. Free download: sign in and click Download ZIP. Add your own Google AI Studio (Gemini) API key to switch on the AI features; the documentation says which features work without one.

How it works

We built DEV3 AI Comment & Community Moderator as a PHP plugin with a React admin app and a small front-end script. Rules run locally on every submission; the AI adds labels on top.

Key design decisions

• A one-way ratchet. Statuses are ranked live < held < spam < trash. The policy can move an item down that list, never up, and flags never move content at all. Approving and deleting are left to people.
• Strictest action wins. Each rule (links, blocklist, posting rate, duplicates, personal data, profanity, Akismet) and each AI label (spam, toxicity, harassment, off-topic, personal data) has a threshold and an action. The decision is the most severe action that fired, with every reason recorded.
• Screening before save, with a time limit. In sync mode the classifier runs inside pre_comment_approved with an 8-second timeout and no retries. If the API fails, the rules decide now and the item is queued for a background re-check.
• Humans win. When a moderator changes an item's status, it is marked reviewed and the AI never moves it again, though a later AI decision is still recorded.
• Native status functions. Comments and reviews move through wp_spam_comment() and friends; bbPress topics and replies through bbPress's own pending and spam statuses, so other plugins see normal events.
• Privacy by default. IP addresses are stored only as hashes, personal data is masked before AI requests, and records can be exported, erased and pruned.

Architecture

One pipeline screens WordPress comments, WooCommerce product reviews and bbPress topics and replies, and writes a moderation record with labels, reasons, sentiment and a history of who moved what. The queue has views for needs review, held, spam and flagged-but-live, bulk actions and a drawer with a reply composer. The Google Gemini API (gemini-2.5-flash) also drafts brand-voice replies and discussion summaries, which stay drafts until accepted. On the front end, an optional "be kind" nudge checks a comment locally (and optionally with AI) before it is posted and lets the writer choose. With AI off, rules, lexicon sentiment, reply templates and the local nudge all still work. The API client and settings come from a shared core used across DEV3's plugins.

What's in the download

• The installable plugin zip: upload it through Plugins → Add New → Upload Plugin.
• Full HTML documentation (installation, settings, hooks, FAQ).

Requirements

• WordPress 6.0 or newer and PHP 7.4 or newer
• Optional: WooCommerce 8 or newer (product reviews) and bbPress 2.6 or newer (topics and replies)
• Optional: Akismet. Its spam verdicts are respected and shown as a reason
• Optional: a Google Gemini API key for AI labels, reply drafts and summaries. Without one, the rules, queue, reply templates, lexicon sentiment and local nudge all work

Learn more

• How we built it: the AI Comment & Community Moderator case study
• Engineering write-up on the DEV3 blog
• Also free in the DEV3 AI Content, SEO & Site Tools Plugins Bundle with every other Content, SEO & Site Tools plugin.