Cowboy MCP News

Cowboy MCP 1.6.0: your agent can now update plugins and themes — safely

2026-07-21T00:00:00Z

Cowboy MCP 1.6.0 lets your AI agent install, update, and delete WordPress plugins and themes — with an automatic file backup, a database checkpoint, and a post-update health check that rolls back automatically if the site breaks. Updates finally get the same safety net as everything else: journaled, undoable, and confirmed before anything destructive runs.

What this means for you

Keeping plugins and themes current is the single most important thing you can do for a WordPress site's security — and also the scariest, because a bad update can take the whole site down. This release removes the fear. Your agent can do the updating for you, and every step is reversible.

What's new

Install, update, and delete plugins and themes. New tools let an agent pull plugins and themes straight from WordPress.org and manage them in place — no WP-CLI and no shell access, just pure PHP.
A real safety net on every update. Before touching anything, the plugin takes a file backup and a database checkpoint. After updating it runs a health check, and if the site is broken it restores the previous version automatically.
Updates show up where you look. Listing your plugins and themes now reports which ones have updates available, so you can see what's outdated at a glance.
Auto-checkpoint, on by default. A new "Auto-checkpoint before plugin & theme updates" setting means a restore point is always waiting, even if you forget to ask for one.
PHP 8.0 and 8.1 fix. A return-type syntax issue that could cause a fatal error on PHP older than 8.2 is resolved.

Because every install, update, and delete is journaled, wp_undo_change can roll any plugin or theme back to the exact version it was before.

Try it

Update all plugins — back up first.

Read the full 1.6.0 changelog on WordPress.org.

Cowboy MCP 1.5.3: Connection Doctor tells you why your agent can't connect

2026-07-20T00:00:00Z

If your AI agent can't reach your WordPress site, Cowboy MCP 1.5.3 tells you exactly why. The new Connection Doctor runs a one-click self-test from the Connection tab and names the likely culprit, instead of leaving you to guess.

What this means for you

Connection problems are the most frustrating part of setting up any MCP server: the agent just says "can't connect," and you're left wondering whether it's your host, a security plugin, or a typo. Connection Doctor turns that dead end into a checklist. It tests the four things that actually break connections — HTTPS, whether your site is publicly reachable, whether the REST API is available, and whether OAuth discovery works — and reports what passed and what didn't.

When something fails, it doesn't just say "error." It names the likely blocker — Cloudflare, ModSecurity, Basic Auth, or a caching plugin — so you know where to look. And it hands you a copy-pasteable report you can drop straight into a support thread instead of describing the problem from memory.

You can run it three ways: from the Connection tab in wp-admin, as the wp_connection_doctor tool so your agent can diagnose itself, or from the command line.

Try it

wp cowboy-mcp doctor

Read the full 1.5.3 changelog on WordPress.org.

Cowboy MCP 1.5.0: undo for everything your AI agent does

2026-07-08T00:00:00Z

Cowboy MCP 1.5.0 gives every change your AI agent makes an undo button. A new per-change undo journal records what the agent did — posts, options, terms, files, users, media, WooCommerce, and more — and you can roll any of it back from wp-admin.

What this means for you

Handing site work to an AI agent is far easier when you know you can take it back. Before this release, a wrong edit meant restoring from a backup. Now there's a proper undo layer built for the way agents actually work.

A per-change undo journal. The new Activity tab logs every change an agent makes, so you can review it and reverse individual changes one at a time. Conflict detection warns you if something else changed in the meantime.
Database checkpoints. Take a one-click snapshot of your database and restore the whole site to it later. A checkpoint is also taken automatically before any mutating WP-CLI command.
Batch undo. Reverse every change from a single batched request together, in one step.
Six rollback tools for agents. Your agent can list changes, undo a change, and create, list, restore, or delete checkpoints — so it can clean up after itself when you ask.

Your MCP API keys and the plugin's own settings are never touched by an undo or a checkpoint restore, so rolling back can't lock you out of your own site.

Try it

Undo the last five changes you made to the pricing page.

Read the full 1.5.0 changelog on WordPress.org.

Cowboy MCP 1.4.0: now on WordPress.org, with one-click sign-in

2026-07-03T00:00:00Z

Cowboy MCP 1.4.0 is the WordPress.org launch: the plugin is now in the official directory, so you can install and update it straight from your dashboard. It also adds one-click sign-in for the Claude desktop and web apps, so you can connect an AI agent to your site without ever opening a terminal.

What this means for you

Being on WordPress.org matters for two reasons. First, installing is now as simple as any other plugin — search, click Install, click Activate — and updates arrive through the normal Plugins screen. Second, the directory review raised the bar on safety: the database tools were changed to use fixed, safe queries instead of free-form SQL, closing off a whole category of risk.

The bigger day-to-day change is one-click sign-in. Instead of generating an API key and pasting an endpoint URL, you enable the Desktop Connector and approve a browser sign-in — the same kind of flow you already use to log into other apps. It's the difference between a five-minute setup and a thirty-second one.

This release also retired the old self-hosted auto-updater, since updates now come through WordPress.org.

A quick follow-up, 1.4.1, built on this with a redesigned connection page: you pick your app — claude.ai, Claude Desktop, ChatGPT, Claude Code, Codex, Cursor, and more — from a sidebar and follow steps tailored to it, including one-click sign-in from ChatGPT.

Try it

Draft a welcome post and publish it to my site.

Read the full 1.4.0 changelog on WordPress.org.