Updated September 25, 2026. We first wrote this in March, before WordPress 7.0 shipped. A lot has settled since then, so this is the current picture.
MCP (Model Context Protocol) is the standard way for AI clients like Claude, Cursor, and Codex to use tools on other systems. When your WordPress site speaks MCP, those clients can read and change it directly, with no browser tab, no SSH, and no copy-pasting between windows.
In March the question was whether WordPress would get MCP in core. Six months later, here’s what actually happened.
What WordPress Shipped
- The Abilities API has been in core since WordPress 6.9. It’s a standard way for plugins to describe actions (“abilities”) with a schema and a permission check.
- WordPress 7.0 (May 20, 2026) added the AI Client and Connectors, so plugins can call AI models through one shared setup. 7.1 followed in August.
- The MCP Adapter is still a separate plugin. The official MCP Adapter (v0.6.1 as of August 2026) turns abilities into MCP tools, but you install it yourself from GitHub or Composer. It isn’t in core or on WordPress.org.
- Core only registers a few abilities, all read-only: site info, user info, and environment info. And abilities stay private until a plugin marks them public for MCP.
- The older
Automattic/wordpress-mcpproject was archived on September 17, 2026, in favor of the adapter.
So WordPress built the rails, not the trains. Whether an AI client can actually do something useful on your site depends on your plugins. Yoast, for example, registers three read-only abilities for its SEO and readability scores. WordPress.com went further and runs its own hosted MCP server with write access for its customers.
What That Means for Your Site
If you want an AI client to work on a self-hosted WordPress site today, you have two routes:
- The adapter route. Install the MCP Adapter and use plugins that register public abilities. It’s the standard, and it will get better as more plugins adopt it. Right now it’s mostly for developers building their own abilities.
- A plugin with its own MCP server. Several plugins ship a ready-made server with a large tool set. They differ a lot in sign-in, permissions, price, and how you undo mistakes. We compared ten in Best WordPress MCP Servers in 2026.
Where PressBot Landed
PressBot has had its own MCP server since March, at /wp-json/pressbot/v1/mcp, signed in with a WordPress Application Password:
- Free: 11 read-only tools: site info, posts, plugins, comments, chatbot conversations, knowledge search, and five site-health checks.
- Pro ($29/yr): all 115 tools, including content, plugins, WooCommerce, Yoast, ACF, Google Analytics, Search Console, and security.
- One tool set everywhere. The same tools run in the WordPress dashboard agent and the Telegram bot, with the same permission checks. Your knowledge base entries are available to MCP clients as resources, and destructive tools are flagged so your client asks first.
In March we said PressBot would register all of its tools as WordPress abilities. We didn’t. Pro registers five: run an AI visibility audit, list opportunities, search external knowledge, summarize conversations, and create a trusted plan. Those make sense as standalone actions for WordPress’s own AI features. The full tool set stays on PressBot’s MCP server, where it already works with every MCP client.
Try It
Connecting takes about five minutes: turn on the MCP server, create an Application Password, and add one entry to your editor. Our Cursor and Claude Code tutorial walks through it, including Codex, several sites, and troubleshooting. More on the server itself is on the PressBot MCP page.
