WooCommerce Memberships: hook map

Use this when building or reviewing an integration that needs to react to WooCommerce Memberships events. This is a curated decision map, not an exhaustive dump of every hook call in the plugin.

Misconception this skill corrects

"Memberships are just posts/meta, so query wc_user_membership posts and update _member_plan_id or post_status directly."

User memberships are stored as custom posts, but the plugin has object wrappers, status hooks, access rules, order-grant metadata, REST/webhook behavior, profile-field storage, and Subscriptions integration. Prefer public functions and WC_Memberships_User_Membership methods unless the task explicitly requires low-level inspection.

When to use this skill

Trigger when ANY of the following is true:

• The user asks for WooCommerce Memberships actions/filters, lifecycle hooks, status hooks, purchase grant hooks, profile fields, REST API hooks, webhooks, member directory, members area, or Subscriptions-linked memberships.
• Code contains wc_memberships_, WC_Memberships_User_Membership, WC_Memberships_Membership_Plan, wc_user_membership, wcm-active, _member_plan_id, _wc_memberships_access_granted, or woocommerce-memberships.
• You need to decide whether to hook at membership creation, post save, status transition, access grant, profile field save, API response shaping, or frontend members-area rendering.

Workflow