WordPress MCP Adapter: Connect ChatGPT or Claude to Your WordPress Site

What if you could ask an AI assistant to list your latest posts, check your site settings or create a draft, and it could actually do it? That is what the WordPress MCP Adapter makes possible. It is an official WordPress plugin that connects your site to AI clients such as Claude Desktop, Claude Code, Cursor and VS Code through the Model Context Protocol (MCP). In this guide we explain how it works and how to connect your site safely, step by step.

What Is MCP?

The Model Context Protocol is an open standard that lets AI apps talk to outside tools in a consistent way. An AI client that supports MCP can discover the tools a server offers, read their descriptions and call them. The MCP Adapter turns your WordPress site into one of those servers.

What Is the WordPress MCP Adapter?

The MCP Adapter is developed in the official WordPress/mcp-adapter repository. It builds on the Abilities API. An ability is a single action registered by WordPress or a plugin, such as “get site info” or “create a draft post”.

According to the official site-owner guide, the adapter itself adds no AI features and no new screens in wp-admin. It does three things:

• It adds one address to your site: /wp-json/mcp/mcp-adapter-default-server.
• It exposes only public abilities. What the assistant can do depends on the abilities your plugins register and mark as public.
• It acts as a real WordPress user. Every action runs with that user’s role and permissions.

When a client connects, it sees three tools: one to discover the public abilities on your site, one to get details about an ability and one to execute it. The WordPress Developer Blog describes these as a layered approach: discover, get info, then execute.

Before You Start

• Back up your site. You are giving an AI tool the ability to act on your site. Follow our UpdraftPlus backup guide first, or use UpdraftPlus Premium for scheduled remote backups.
• Use HTTPS. Your credentials travel with every request.
• Create a dedicated user. Give it the lowest role that can do the job. An assistant connected as an Editor cannot do anything an Editor cannot do.
• Test on staging first, especially before enabling abilities that create or change content.

Step 1: Install the MCP Adapter

Install and activate the MCP Adapter like any other plugin. You can download the latest release from GitHub, install it from WordPress.org, or use WP-CLI:

wp plugin install https://github.com/WordPress/mcp-adapter/releases/latest/download/mcp-adapter.zip --activate

Once active, the plugin creates the default MCP server automatically.

Step 2: Create an Application Password

1. In wp-admin, go to Users > Profile (or edit the dedicated user).
2. Scroll to Application Passwords.
3. Enter a name you will recognise, such as “Claude on my laptop”, and click Add New Application Password.
4. Copy the password. WordPress shows it only once.

Treat this password like any other secret. Never paste it into public chats, forums or screenshots.

Step 3: Connect Your AI Client

Claude Desktop, Cursor, VS Code and similar apps

Most desktop clients read a JSON config file. In Claude Desktop, open Settings > Developer > Edit Config. In Cursor, the file is ~/.cursor/mcp.json. Add an entry like this, using your own values:

{
  "mcpServers": {
    "my-wordpress-site": {
      "command": "npx",
      "args": ["-y", "@automattic/mcp-wordpress-remote@latest"],
      "env": {
        "WP_API_URL": "https://example.com/wp-json/mcp/mcp-adapter-default-server",
        "WP_API_USERNAME": "your-username",
        "WP_API_PASSWORD": "your application password"
      }
    }
  }
}

Save the file and restart the app. The @automattic/mcp-wordpress-remote package is a small helper that passes requests from the client to your site.

Claude Code and other HTTP clients

Clients that accept a URL and a custom header can connect directly over HTTP, using an Authorization: Basic header built from your username and Application Password. The official guide includes the exact command.

Step 4: Test the Connection

Ask your assistant: “List the WordPress abilities you can use.” If it returns a list, you are connected. If the list is empty, that is normal. It means no plugin on your site has made an ability public yet.

Adding Abilities

Abilities come from WordPress core and from plugins. Developers register them with wp_register_ability(). Every ability must declare a registered category, and core provides two: site and user. To be reachable over MCP, an ability has to be marked public in its metadata.

The official guide warns that if a category is missing, the ability silently fails to register when WP_DEBUG is off. If an ability does not appear, check its category first.

Security Best Practices

• Least privilege: never connect as an Administrator unless you truly need to.
• One password per client: create a separate Application Password for each app, so you can revoke one without affecting the others.
• Revoke unused access: delete Application Passwords you no longer use.
• Review before running: most AI clients ask before calling a tool. Read what it plans to do.
• Trust your plugins: abilities come from plugins, so only install plugins from trusted sources. Our malware scanning guide shows how to check a ZIP first.

What Can You Do With It?

That depends on the abilities your site exposes. Typical examples include reading site information, listing posts, creating drafts and checking settings. As more plugins register abilities, the list grows. If you build with Elementor, read our guide to the Elementor Atomic Editor to see where page building is heading next.

Final Thoughts

The WordPress MCP Adapter is the official, standard way to connect AI assistants to WordPress. Setup takes only a few minutes: install the plugin, create an Application Password, add your site to your AI client and test it. Start with a low-privilege user, keep backups, and expand access only as you build trust.