# Cowboy MCP

> A free, open-source WordPress plugin that turns your site into an MCP server, so an AI agent can run and maintain it for you in plain English — no dashboard clicking, no custom code, and every change undoable.

Connect from a desktop or web app — Claude Desktop, Claude.ai, ChatGPT, or the Codex app — with a one-click browser sign-in and no terminal, or from a terminal tool like Claude Code, Codex, or Opencode. Cursor, Windsurf, Cline, Zed, VS Code, Gemini, and n8n connect too — anything that speaks MCP, on live sites and local ones. Then just describe what you want done. The agent reads your site and carries out the work directly, with confirmation prompts and previews so nothing happens that you didn't intend. It's most useful for people who run real WordPress sites — store owners, agencies, and developers — who'd rather delegate site work than click through wp-admin.

## What you can ask it to do

- **Write and manage content** — draft, edit, schedule, and bulk-update posts and pages; edit Gutenberg pages block by block; organize categories and tags; upload and attach media. *"Turn last week's webinar notes into a blog post and schedule it for Tuesday morning."*
- **Run your WooCommerce store** — create and update products, change prices and stock, process and refund orders, build coupons, and pull sales reports. *"Put everything in the Summer collection 20% off through Friday and email me the week's revenue."*
- **Keep the site secure** — run Wordfence scans, review and block malicious IPs, watch live traffic, and respond to alerts. *"Scan the site and block every IP that failed login more than ten times today."*
- **Maintain and administer** — update plugins and themes safely (backup, checkpoint, health check, auto-restore), manage users and roles, change settings, clear caches, and run WP-CLI tasks. *"Update all plugins — back up first."*
- **Fix things that break** — read error logs, test emails and HTTP requests, inspect hooks and REST routes, and repair database tables. *"Why is the checkout page 500-ing?"*
- **Build and tune pages** — work with Elementor templates and the block editor, and read or write Advanced Custom Fields. *"Add an FAQ section to the pricing page using our existing template."*
- **Clean up SEO and forms** — adjust Yoast or Rank Math metadata and review Gravity Forms, WPForms, or Contact Form 7 submissions. *"Add a meta description to every post missing one."*

## Why it's safe to hand over

The agent can't run wild. Destructive actions require explicit confirmation, any change can be previewed as a dry run first, and every call is written to an audit log you can review. Every change also lands in a per-change undo journal, and one-click database checkpoints can restore your site's database tables — so a single edit, or all of it, can be rolled back. Keys can be scoped to read-only or a chosen list of tools, are stored only as one-way hashes, and can be revoked individually. Sensitive settings and dangerous database or WP-CLI commands are blocked, requests are rate-limited per key, and the most powerful operations stay disabled until a human turns them on in wp-admin. Nothing is routed through a third-party relay.

## Get started

- [Install the plugin](https://wordpress.org/plugins/cowboy-mcp/): in your WordPress dashboard, go to Plugins → Add New, search for Cowboy MCP, and click Install then Activate
- Connect with no terminal — enable the Desktop Connector in Settings → Cowboy MCP, add your site as a custom connector in Claude Desktop, Claude.ai, ChatGPT, or the Codex app, and approve the browser sign-in. From a terminal tool (Claude Code, Codex, Gemini CLI, Cursor), generate an API key and register the endpoint URL with it
- [Support forum](https://wordpress.org/support/plugin/cowboy-mcp/): questions and connection problems, usually answered within a day

## Good to know

- Runs entirely on your own server — no external service, proxy, or telemetry; your chosen AI client connects directly to your site
- Free and open source under GPL-2.0, with no paid tier or usage limits
- Works on self-hosted WordPress 6.2+ / PHP 8.0+ with zero dependencies (no Composer, npm, or build step)
- Integrations light up automatically when their plugin is active — WooCommerce, Wordfence, ACF, Elementor, Yoast, Rank Math, major caching plugins

## More

- [Resources hub](https://cowboymcp.com/guides) — guides, glossary, news, connect & capability guides
- [WordPress MCP guide](https://cowboymcp.com/wordpress-mcp) · [Security](https://cowboymcp.com/security) · [Is it safe to give AI access?](https://cowboymcp.com/guides/is-it-safe-to-give-ai-access-to-wordpress)
- [Undo AI changes](https://cowboymcp.com/guides/undo-ai-changes-wordpress) · [Connect Claude Desktop](https://cowboymcp.com/connect-wordpress-to-claude-desktop)
- [All WordPress MCP plugins compared](https://cowboymcp.com/compare) — data table plus head-to-head pages under /compare/
- [Agent skills](https://cowboymcp.com/skills) · [Glossary](https://cowboymcp.com/glossary) · [News](https://cowboymcp.com/news) · [About](https://cowboymcp.com/about)