Short answer
WordPress has published the MCP Adapter plugin, which lets AI systems talk to a site and its plugins, in the official WordPress.org directory. Until now it was downloadable only from GitHub. There is now an official option that installs from the admin dashboard, giving AI agents a standard way to manage a site and making authorisation important.
Highlights
- MCP Adapter has been released as WordPress's official, canonical MCP plugin.
- Version 0.70 is the first on WordPress.org; it was previously distributed through GitHub.
- The plugin handles authorisation through the Abilities API.
2 min readAuthor: UNIT Journal EditorEditor-in-chief: Uğur Deniz İlhan
WordPress has released its official MCP Adapter plugin, Search Engine Journal reports. Anyone who wants to add AI functionality to a site now has an option WordPress itself recommends.
What is MCP and what does it do for WordPress?
MCP (Model Context Protocol) is an open standard developed by Anthropic that lets AI systems connect securely to apps, data, plugins and websites. On WordPress it means AI can interact with the site, its plugins and WordPress functions, such as the ones that publish posts.
What is new in the plugin?
Jason Adams, Director of Engineering, AI at Automattic, described the plugin as the canonical MCP plugin for WordPress. It is designed to stay backwards-compatible with MCP versions, and it uses the Abilities API to avoid duplicating functionality while handling authorisation.
The plugin has existed for some time but could only be downloaded from its GitHub releases page; even so, it has more than 40,000 installations. Version 0.70 is the first to be published in the official WordPress.org repository, and it can be installed from the admin dashboard.
What should site owners and agencies do?
This section goes beyond the facts in the source. Giving AI agents access to a site can speed up content production and routine maintenance, but it also creates risk if the scope of access is not tightly limited.
- Test the plugin on a staging site before using it on a live one.
- Grant the AI agent only the permissions it needs, and require separate approval for actions such as publishing and deleting.
- Ask your plugin developers whether their plugins support the Abilities API.
- Keep a log of the changes the agent makes, and have a person review content before it goes live.
Frequently asked
- Who is the WordPress MCP Adapter for?
- It is for developers and site owners who want to add an AI connection to their site or plugins. Installing it is not enough: you also need to decide which actions are exposed to AI.
Sources
- Search Engine Journal ·
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