MCP for WordPress

The Model Context Protocol (MCP) is how external AI agents — Claude Desktop, Cursor, a CI bot, a custom automation — call into a WordPress site without a developer wiring a bespoke API for each one. WordPress core’s optional MCP Adapter exposes registered Abilities over MCP; the agent sees a typed, permission-checked tool list, not raw database access.

How it fits with Connectors and Abilities

  • Connectors + AI Client answer how does WordPress talk to a model.
  • Abilities answer what is a plugin allowed to let AI do on this site.
  • MCP answers how does an agent outside wp-admin reach those abilities.

MCP doesn’t replace the Abilities API — it’s a transport on top of it. An ability written once (say, “update SEO meta for a post”) works identically whether it’s called from the in-editor AI Client or from a Claude Desktop session over MCP.

What an MCP server exposes

  • Tools — the abilities a plugin registered, each with a schema and a permission callback. An agent can only call what’s registered and only if the acting user’s capabilities pass.
  • Resources — read-only data an agent can pull (a SEO inventory row, a Dynamics history entry) without a write path.
  • No standing credentials in the agent — the MCP server runs inside WordPress; the agent authenticates to it, not to the underlying provider APIs.

Setting it up

  1. Install a plugin that registers the MCP Adapter (core-adjacent, ships as a feature plugin ahead of full core merge) or a 4WP plugin with abilities pre-registered, like 4WP MCP Abilities.
  2. Confirm which abilities are exposed — check the plugin’s registered ability list, not just “AI is on.”
  3. Point an MCP-capable client (Claude Desktop, Cursor, a custom agent runner) at the site’s MCP endpoint.
  4. Test with a read-only ability first (list SEO inventory, read FAQ entries) before enabling anything that writes.

Where this is going in the 4WP ecosystem

The planned AI-assist layer in 4WP SEO Helper is built so the same content-change flow works two ways: in-editor via Connectors/AI Client, and externally via MCP for agent-driven audits. Same abilities, same permission checks, two entry points.

Related

Status: draft — this page is linked from live nav and from the published AI & WordPress article, but currently 404s. Highest-priority page to ship in this batch.