How MCP lets Claude work inside your WordPress site

MCP lets assistants such as Claude use your WordPress site directly. What it is, how the MCP Adapter works, what it can do and how to keep it safe.

By Mahesh Patel8 November 20264 min read

A chat request “Write a blog post about modern design” flowing through MCP into a WordPress editor showing “New draft added”, under the words “Ask in chat. It happens in WordPress.”

Imagine asking Claude to “draft a post about our summer opening hours” or “find the pages that have no description”, and it simply does it, in your WordPress. That is what MCP makes possible, and WordPress now supports it through an official plugin.

Here is what MCP is, how it works in WordPress, what it can do today, and how to keep it safe.

In short

MCP, the Model Context Protocol, is an open standard for connecting AI assistants to tools and data.
WordPress’s official MCP Adapter plugin turns the site’s abilities into tools an assistant can use.
The assistant signs in as a WordPress user you choose, with an application password you can take back.
What it can do depends on the abilities your WordPress and plugins offer.
Use a separate user with limited rights, allow only what you need, and try it on a test site first.

What MCP is

Anthropic introduced the Model Context Protocol in November 2024 as an open standard: one common way for AI assistants to connect to apps, files and services, instead of a different connection for each. Claude and many other assistants and tools now support it.

Think of it as a universal plug. An app offers an MCP “server” describing what it can do; an assistant connects to it and can then use those actions when you ask.

How it works in WordPress

Abilities. Since WordPress 6.9, WordPress and plugins can describe what they can do as “abilities”, such as creating a draft or finding a product, in a form machines understand.
The MCP Adapter. This official plugin publishes the abilities a site chooses to share as MCP tools.
The connection. An assistant such as Claude connects to your site over the web, or on your own computer through WP-CLI, and signs in as a WordPress user with an application password.
The request. You ask in plain words; the assistant picks the right tools and shows you what it did.

What you can ask it to do

It depends on which abilities your site offers, and that list grows as plugins add their own. Typical examples:

Draft a post or a page from your notes, ready for you to review.
Find content: posts on a topic, pages without a description, old pages to update.
Answer questions about your site, such as which plugins are active.
In shops and booking plugins that offer abilities: look up products, orders or bookings.

Keep it safe

A separate user for the assistant, with the smallest role that does the job, such as Author instead of Administrator.
An application password for that user, which you can take back at any time under Users.
Only the abilities you need. Abilities are shared with MCP only when they are marked as public.
A test site first. See what it does before you let it near your live site.
Review its work. Let it create drafts; you publish.

Who it is for today

Setting it up still means installing a plugin and adding a few lines to your assistant’s settings, so today it suits developers and site owners who enjoy trying new things. Expect it to get simpler as assistants and hosts add one-click connections. For the wider picture, see WordPress 7.0 put AI into WordPress itself.