Do new Etch Studio features come back to WordPress?

A Bev reads "the features come back" and decides Etch Studio is fine. It is not. Kevin Geary said the new work comes back to WordPress. The release tracker shows that it did not. The line exists so you stop checking. Check. Studio kept the upgrade. EtchWP got fixes.

What he said

“you keep repeating the silly nonsense that new features are only available in studio when they come to WP anyway.”

The screenshot was taken September 22, 2026. YouTube labeled the comment two days old, so the reply dates to about September 20. There is no public permalink in the capture, which is why this quote is graded as a held screenshot rather than a stream timestamp. The personal lines around it, including a secondhand claim about someone else's project revenue, are not part of the product record and are not quoted here.

A viewer compared Etch to another builder that kept new features in a hosted app. Geary's answer treats that person as confused. The comparison was accurate. Studio kept the new architecture. The WordPress plugin did not receive it. The dates are on the timeline.

What he said a month earlier

“This is kind of the development grounds for where we do things the way they should have been done and then we find a way to port that over to WordPress.”

On that stream he named data manager, data sources, schema view, and a visual JSON builder as Studio-first work, then said WordPress would get a port. "Come to WP anyway" and "ported later" are the same stall. Neither one put those features in EtchWP. If the port were real, the changelog would name it. It does not.

What the changelog shows

71 days since the last substantial EtchWP feature release (2026-07-08, v1.6.2). Latest release: 1.6.7 on 2026-09-03.

Open etchwp.com/changelog and count it. The EtchWP release tracker keeps the table. As of September 28, 2026:

1. Last substantial feature release: July 8, 2026 (1.6.2).
2. August 10 through September 3: fixes, plus one API property in 1.6.7.
3. No changelog row for data sources, schema view, relationships, or the visual JSON builder.

See Is EtchWP still being actively developed?. Maintenance is not an upgrade. Fixes keep the old plugin alive. They do not deliver the Studio architecture. A September comment that says the features come back anyway does not change a single row on that log.

The database is SurrealDB

A viewer on the same capture asked whether the database is PostgreSQL. Geary answered with one word.

“surreal”

That word is the product name. SurrealDB is the engine, not a dismissal of the question, and not PostgreSQL. The August 25 stream described Studio's cost as operating the database and did not name which one. This comment is the public naming.

What would make the comment true

A feature release in EtchWP that names a Studio capability and actually ships it. The asset manager made that trip once. Nothing in this wave has. Until a row appears, "they come to WP anyway" is a line you are supposed to repeat instead of reading the changelog. Do not repeat it.