WordPress MCP Adapter demo

February 6, 2026 · 3 min read

I can now treat a WordPress site like an MCP tool server—abilities become callable tools, which turns admin tasks into agent-friendly workflows.

Why I Built It I keep seeing teams wire ad‑hoc AI actions directly into plugins, and it’s brittle: no shared schema, no discoverability, and permissions are bolted on after the fact. WordPress’s Abilities API + the MCP Adapter give a structured path: define a capability once, let clients discover it, then let MCP-aware agents call it safely. That makes agent workflows reproducible instead of magical.

The Solution The MCP Adapter maps registered Abilities into MCP primitives (mostly tools) so AI clients can discover and execute them. The default adapter server exposes three discovery/exec tools and requires you to mark abilities as public for MCP access. For local dev, you can use STDIO transport via WP-CLI; for remote sites, a proxy can expose HTTP transport.

warning

This works best for read‑only or low‑risk abilities. If an ability mutates data, you must treat it like an API endpoint: strict permissions, rate limits, and audit logging.

Here’s a minimal layout for an MCP server config (the adapter’s examples use mcpServers for Claude/Cursor, and servers for VS Code):

Claude/Cursor
VS Code

{
  "mcpServers": {
    "wordpress-mcp-server": {
      "command": "wp",
      "args": [
        "--path=/path/to/wordpress",
        "mcp-adapter",
        "serve",
        "--server=mcp-adapter-default-server",
        "--user=admin"
      ]
    }
  }
}

{
  "servers": {
    "wordpress-mcp-server": {
      "command": "wp",
      "args": [
        "--path=/path/to/wordpress",
        "mcp-adapter",
        "serve",
        "--server=mcp-adapter-default-server",
        "--user=admin"
      ]
    }
  }
}

Gotchas I’m watching:

Abilities must be explicitly exposed for MCP access, otherwise they won’t show up via discovery.
A “tool” is executable logic; if the ability is purely informational, you can map it as a resource instead to avoid accidental execution.
STDIO is perfect for local experiments; HTTP needs stronger auth and operational guardrails.

The Code View Code

What I Learned

Abilities give WordPress a stable, cross‑context contract that MCP can expose without custom glue. That’s a big step toward agent‑ready plugins.
The adapter’s discovery/inspect/execute trio makes agents safer: they can introspect before acting instead of guessing.
I’d keep production usage read‑only at first; mutate‑on‑call abilities need the same rigor as public REST routes.

References​

References