Connecting Claude Desktop to your WordPress site is now as easy as pasting a URL and clicking Approve. AI Engine ships with proper OAuth 2.1 support for MCP, so there is nothing to install, no script to run, and no config file to edit. 😮
What’s MCP? The Model Context Protocol (MCP) is the open standard Claude (and other AI assistants) uses to call external tools.
With AI Engine, your WordPress site becomes an MCP server that publishes 30+ tools: everything from wp_create_post to wp_upload_media and theme operations. New to MCP? Check out MCP for WordPress for a beginner-friendly introduction.
Using a different assistant? See our guides for Claude Code (terminal, uses a Bearer Token) and ChatGPT. This article covers Claude Desktop.
Hit “Couldn’t reach the MCP server” or the consent screen never loads? See Fix: MCP Connection Issues — local-only hostnames, blocked /.well-known/, WP Engine’s WAF, 2FA interception, and a quick diagnostic checklist.
Quick Setup
1. Enable MCP on Your Site
In WordPress, go to AI Engine → Settings → MCP and turn on Enable MCP Server. That’s the only switch you need for OAuth. You don’t have to set a Bearer Token: OAuth clients like Claude Desktop don’t use one. 😺
While you’re there, pick which feature groups to expose under MCP Features: WordPress (on by default), Plugins, Themes, Polylang, WooCommerce, and so on.
2. Add the Connector in Claude Desktop
In Claude Desktop, open Settings → Connectors → Add custom connector, give it a name (like My WordPress), and paste your site’s MCP URL:
https://example.com/wp-json/mcp/v1/http3. Sign In and Approve
Claude Desktop opens your browser and sends you to your WordPress site. If you’re not already logged in, you’ll see WordPress’s normal login screen first (the standard wp-login.php page, nothing custom). Once you’re in, you’ll land on an approval screen showing which app is asking, who you’re signed in as, and what role you have on the site. Click Approve, and that’s it. 🎉
Claude Desktop now has access to your WordPress site through your own user account. Anything you can do in the admin, Claude can do too, scoped to your role.
What You Can Do
Just ask, in plain English:
- Simple: “List my latest 5 posts.”
- Simple: “Create a draft post titled My AI Journey, one paragraph, and attach a random Media Library image.”
- Intermediate: “Review the 10 newest posts, then publish a logical follow-up. Reuse existing categories and tags. Generate an image if none fits.”
- Advanced: “Fork Twenty Twenty-One into a dark grid theme called Futurism supporting post types Article and Project.”
Both pacman.meowapps.com and mcp.meowapps.com are live WordPress sites built entirely using Claude and AI Engine. No extra plugins, no custom themes, no manual editing. One is a retro gaming site, the other a scratchpad we update while testing new features. They show what’s possible with just a clean WordPress install and the MCP bridge.
Even Better with SEO Engine
If you also have SEO Engine installed, Claude gets a whole new toolbox through the same MCP connection: visitor analytics, bot traffic, Google Search Console insights, and on-page SEO controls. Nothing extra to configure. As soon as SEO Engine is active, its tools show up alongside AI Engine’s. 🧠
This is where the combo really shines. Claude can now see who actually reads your site (real humans, Googlebot, Bingbot, ChatGPT, Perplexity, even Claude itself), where they come from, what they search for, and how each post performs. And it can act on what it finds: rewrite titles, improve meta descriptions, suggest internal links, score pages, plug orphan content back into your topic clusters. SEO Engine works with both Google Analytics and Plausible, so the same questions work no matter which one you use.
Things to try
- Visitor analytics: “Which 5 posts brought in the most traffic this month, and where did the visitors come from?”
- AI referrals: “Show me how many visitors ChatGPT and Perplexity sent me in the last 30 days, and which posts they landed on.”
- Bot mix: “Compare my AI bot traffic this month vs last month. Which crawlers grew the most?”
- Search Console: “List my top quick-win queries (page 2 rankings) and rewrite the titles to push them onto page 1.”
- SEO maintenance: “Scan my last 20 posts for missing SEO titles or excerpts, and fill in whatever’s empty.”
- Internal linking: “Find my orphan pages and suggest internal links from related posts that already exist.”
- Topic strategy: “Group my posts by topic, find the gaps, and propose 5 new articles I should write next.”
One assistant, one approval, full reach over content, SEO, and analytics. All from a chat window. 🚀
Manage Connected Apps
Back in the MCP settings panel, the Connected Apps section lists every OAuth grant: which client, which WordPress user it’s tied to, when it was authorized, and when it was last used. One click revokes access. 🔒
Also Works in Claude Cowork
Claude Cowork — Anthropic’s collaborative workspace tab that lives inside Claude Desktop (currently macOS, Max Plan) — uses the same custom-connector system as Claude Desktop and claude.ai. The MCP connector you set up above shows up in Cowork automatically. No extra setup, no second OAuth flow. 🤝
This is true for any remote MCP server. Local stdio MCP servers (the kind configured in claude_desktop_config.json) are Desktop-only and don’t appear in Cowork — but AI Engine’s MCP is remote Streamable HTTP, so it’s right at home there.
Prefer a Bearer Token?
If you’re using a developer tool (like Claude Code, a script, or your own client), you can skip OAuth and use a Bearer Token instead. Generate one in the MCP settings, choose an Access Level (Admin, Read-Write, or Read-Only), and pass it as a standard Authorization: Bearer header. See our Claude Code guide for a concrete example.
MCP gives Claude full access to your WordPress through your account. It can create, modify, and delete content, plugins, themes, and settings. Start with a test site, and use it wisely on production!
Legacy: The Old SSE Flow
If you set this up before OAuth landed, you may remember the old mcp.js Node script and the /wp-json/mcp/v1/sse endpoint. That path is now deprecated and scheduled for removal in July 2026. New installs don’t see it anymore. If you’re still on it, switching to the Streamable HTTP endpoint above takes about a minute and gets rid of the Node bridge entirely.
