MCP

WordPress.com includes a built-in MCP (Model Context Protocol) server, enabling seamless integration with MCP-enabled AI agents like Claude Desktop, VS Code, Cursor, and more.

What is MCP?

MCP is an open protocol that standardizes how applications provide context to LLMs (Large Language Models). Connecting your AI agent to WordPress.com allows you to interact with your WordPress.com account and websites using the natural language interfaces that these AI applications provide.

At a high level, here’s how MCP adds context to your AI requests:

• You ask your AI agent for some information about your WordPress.com account or sites
• The AI agent uses an LLM to understand the request and determines that it needs more context. It checks if there are MCP tools it can use to enable that context.
• It finds the right MCP tool and attempts to request it. The AI agent asks for your permission to make that request.
• Once you give permission, the MCP tool request is made, and the specific data the tool can provide is returned. That data is then included in the request to the LLM.
• The LLM uses your original request and the context from the MCP tool to generate its response.

At no point in time is data shared between the MCP server and the LLM that you don’t have complete control over. It also does not use the data from the MCP tools to train AI models; the data is used only once as part of the original request.

MCP tool access

On WordPress.com, access to specific MCP tools is restricted by the same restrictions applied to user roles. For example, an Administrator has the highest level of permission and can use almost all tools, whereas an Editor can only use tools related to posts, pages, comments, categories, tags, and media.

Requirements

To connect your AI agent application to WordPress.com, you will need to have Node.js (version 22.0 or greater) installed on your computer. Installing Node.js will also install the npx command-line tool, which is required to run the mcp-wpcom-remote proxy, enabling communication with the MCP server.

You can install Node.js by downloading it from the Node.js website. Other options include using Node Version Manager (aka nvm), which enables developers to have multiple versions of Node.js installed.

A note on npx versions

You may encounter issues connecting to MCP if you have multiple Node.js versions installed via nvm.

The proxy that connects to the MCP server requires a specific minimum version of Node.js to function correctly (v22 or newer). If you have older versions installed, npx may default to using one of those versions instead of the one set as default in your nvm configuration.

You can resolve this by ensuring that the path to the correct npx version is specified in the connection environment variables.

Use the following command to check which version of npx is being used:

which npx

The output should point to the installed npx binary configured as your computer’s default.

/Users/username/.nvm/versions/node/v22.16.0/bin/npx

You can then update your MCP server configuration to specify a custom PATH environment variable, which includes the path in the particular npx executable, as well as your default system paths.

{
  "mcpServers": {
    "wpcom-mcp": {
      "command": "/Users/username/.nvm/versions/node/v22.16.0/bin/npx",
      "args": [
        "-y",
        "@automattic/mcp-wpcom-remote@latest"
      ],
      "env": {
        "PATH": "/Users/username/.nvm/versions/node/v22.16.0/bin/:/usr/local/bin:/usr/bin:/bin:/usr/sbin:/sbin"
      }
    }
  }
}

Supported clients

You can use any MCP-enabled AI client application to connect to WordPress.com. If you don’t already have one, we’ve listed some of the most popular below.

• Claude Desktop
• VS Code
• Cursor

Available MCP Tools

All WordPress.com MCP Tools are listed in the WordPress.com MCP Tools Reference doc.

Enable MCP on WordPress.com

To use MCP on WordPress.com, you need to complete the following steps:

1. Enable MCP either on your WordPress.com account
2. Connect your MCP-enabled AI client
3. Accept the OAuth authentication request

To enable MCP on your WordPress.com account, navigate to your MCP settings here, or:

1. Log in to your WordPress.com dashboard.
2. Hover over your name in the top right-hand corner and then click “My WordPress.com Account.”
3. Click MCP on the My Profile page.

To enable MCP on your account:

1. Toggle “Allow MCP access.”

2. Once enabled, you can also enable or disable specific MCP tools.
3. To configure an MCP client, click on the “Configure MCP client” button.
4. On the MCP Setup page, select the client you wish to configure from the drop-down menu. The page will display a Quick Setup option and/or a Manual Setup option.
   • Quick Setup: This option allows you to set up the MCP configuration in just one click for a few of the available clients.
   • Manual Setup: This is a manual JSON configuration you’ll need to paste into your client application. View the linked setup instructions to ensure that you configure the MCP connection in your client application correctly.

Disable MCP Access for specific sites

At the bottom of the MCP Account Settings page, you can also disable MCP access to specific sites.

Disabling access to specific sites will block all MCP tools for all users on that site, and override your account settings for that site.

To block MCP access for a site:

1. Search for, or select, a site from the list of available sites
2. Toggle “Disable MCP access for this site” off

You can enable MCP access for specific sites in the same way, by toggling “Disable MCP access for this site” back on.

Authentication

The WordPress.com MCP implementation utilizes our existing OAuth authentication mechanism, ensuring that your account login details are not stored on your computer.

Once you configure your application, the WordPress.com OAuth flow will automatically trigger, and ask you to log in to your WordPress.com account (if you aren’t already) and authorise the application.

You can disconnect the application at any time through your WordPress.com account under Security → Connected Apps by disconnecting the WordPress MCP Connector application.

Troubleshooting

Viewing connection logs

If you are experiencing problems connecting to the MCP server, you can write the MCP connection logs to a log file.

To do this, use the LOG_FILE environment variable in the MCP JSON configuration file and point it to a path on your local machine.

{
  "mcpServers": {
    "wpcom-mcp": {
      "command": "npx",
      "args": [
        "-y",
        "@automattic/mcp-wpcom-remote@latest"
      ],
      "env": {
        "PATH": "/Users/username/.nvm/versions/node/v22.16.0/bin/:/usr/local/bin:/usr/bin:/bin:/usr/sbin:/sbin",
        "LOG_FILE": "/local/path/to/logs/wpcom-mcp.log"
      }
    }
  }
}

Disabling tools

If you disable any tools on your account or disable MCP on any sites, you will need to restart the MCP server connection in your AI client. This allows the application client to refresh the list of available tools.