Royal MCP

Security-first MCP server for WordPress. Connect Claude, ChatGPT, and Gemini to your WordPress site with API key + OAuth 2.1 authentication, full activity logging, and capability-gated access.

Download on WordPress.org · Documentation · Royal Plugins

A WordPress plugin that exposes your site as a Model Context Protocol server. AI agents — Claude.ai web, Claude Desktop, ChatGPT, custom clients — can read and write posts, pages, media, users, menus, WooCommerce orders, and Elementor pages, with every call going through capability gating, rate limiting, and an audit log. Distributed via the official WordPress.org plugin directory.

Quick facts

Related MCP server: wp-cli-mcp

Capabilities

WordPress core (73 tools, always available)

• Content — Posts, pages, custom post types (full CRUD + revisions + featured images)

• Taxonomies — Categories, tags, custom taxonomies, term meta, post-term linking

• Media — Browse, upload (URL or base64), update metadata, delete

• Comments — Create, moderate (approve / spam / trash)

• Users — Read display names + roles (emails and usernames are not exposed)

• Menus — Read, create items, reorder, update with destructive-write guardrails

• Theme — Custom CSS, theme mods, active theme detection

• Site — Permalink structure, options (allowlisted), site info

• Search — Cross-content search by query

• SEO — Yoast / Rank Math / AIOSEO meta read/write where the plugin is active

• Diagnostics — Site status (WP/PHP/MySQL/plugins/themes/cron in one call), PHP error-log tail, WP cron schedule, and MCP royal_mcp_connection_health (returns route, auth method, session ID, plugin version, and active page-builder versions for Divi + Elementor + Gutenberg)

Plugin integrations (71 tools, conditional)

Auto-register only when the integrated plugin is active.

WordPress Abilities API bridge (WP 6.9+)

WordPress 6.9 shipped the Abilities API — a primitive that lets plugins register typed capabilities AI agents can call. As of 1.4.38, every Royal MCP tool also registers as a WordPress ability, giving you three ways to reach the same handlers:

1. Native — Royal MCP's /wp-json/royal-mcp/v1/mcp Streamable HTTP endpoint (unchanged, always available).

2. WP MCP Adapter — if the wordpress/mcp-adapter package is installed, Royal MCP registers a named royal-mcp-server on the mcp_adapter_init hook alongside adapter's default server.

3. WP core REST — direct ability invocation at /wp-json/wp-abilities/v1/abilities/{name}/run for callers that prefer the core WP endpoint.

Same handlers, three transports, one set of per-tool capability gates. Bridge can be disabled with the royal_mcp_abilities_registration_enabled option (default: on).

What we don't do

Explicit scope boundaries — the integration model is "narrow tools that work reliably," not "expose every API surface."

• No widget-level Elementor generation from scratch. Atomic widgets (Editor V4) pass through opaque; we never decode atomic schemas because Elementor itself may shift them.

• No Beaver Builder / Divi / Bricks page-builder JSON writes. Standard post content is readable and writable; page-builder-specific JSON storage is opaque unless covered by a dedicated tool.

• No theme builder template creation (Elementor or otherwise).

• No core file modifications — Royal MCP never writes to wp-content/themes, wp-includes, or wp-admin.

• No plugin installation or upgrades via MCP. Discovery yes; install/activate/deactivate no.

• No raw SQL. Queries go through WP_Query and $wpdb->prepare() only.

Connect

Install

1. Install from WordPress.org (recommended — auto-updates via WP admin) or upload the GitHub release zip.

2. Royal MCP → Settings → click Generate API Key.

3. Pick a client below.

Claude.ai web (OAuth — recommended)

Easiest path — no config file edits, no API key in your client.

1. In Claude.ai → Settings → Connectors → Add Custom Connector.

2. URL: https://yoursite.com/wp-json/royal-mcp/v1/mcp

3. Approve the OAuth consent screen when prompted. Claude.ai handles dynamic client registration + PKCE flow against your site.

Claude Desktop (.mcpb one-click bundle — new in 1.4.38)

Easiest Claude Desktop path — no mcp-remote, no npx, no config-file editing.

1. Download royal-mcp-1.4.38.mcpb from the latest GitHub release.

2. Double-click the .mcpb file — Claude Desktop opens the install prompt.

3. Enter your site URL + API key when prompted. Connection is live.

The bundle ships a zero-dependency stdio-to-HTTPS bridge in Node ≥18, which Claude Desktop already includes. See Claude Desktop MCP Bundles for the .mcpb spec.

Claude Desktop (OAuth via mcp-remote)

{
  "mcpServers": {
    "my-wordpress": {
      "command": "npx",
      "args": ["-y", "mcp-remote", "https://yoursite.com/wp-json/royal-mcp/v1/mcp"]
    }
  }
}

Config path: ~/Library/Application Support/Claude/claude_desktop_config.json (macOS) or %APPDATA%\Claude\claude_desktop_config.json (Windows).

Claude Desktop (API key)

Skip OAuth and authenticate via header:

{
  "mcpServers": {
    "my-wordpress": {
      "command": "npx",
      "args": [
        "-y", "mcp-remote",
        "https://yoursite.com/wp-json/royal-mcp/v1/mcp",
        "--header", "X-Royal-MCP-API-Key:YOUR_API_KEY"
      ]
    }
  }
}

ChatGPT

ChatGPT's custom MCP connector takes the same URL as Claude.ai web. Follow ChatGPT's connector flow and paste https://yoursite.com/wp-json/royal-mcp/v1/mcp.

Raw HTTP (custom clients)

# 1. Initialize a session. -i prints headers so you can grab Mcp-Session-Id.
curl -i -X POST https://yoursite.com/wp-json/royal-mcp/v1/mcp \
  -H "X-Royal-MCP-API-Key: YOUR_KEY" \
  -H "Content-Type: application/json" \
  -H "Accept: application/json, text/event-stream" \
  -d '{
    "jsonrpc": "2.0",
    "method": "initialize",
    "id": 1,
    "params": {
      "protocolVersion": "2025-11-25",
      "capabilities": {},
      "clientInfo": {"name": "my-app", "version": "1.0"}
    }
  }'

# 2. List available tools using the session id from the response header.
curl -X POST https://yoursite.com/wp-json/royal-mcp/v1/mcp \
  -H "X-Royal-MCP-API-Key: YOUR_KEY" \
  -H "Mcp-Session-Id: <session_id>" \
  -H "Content-Type: application/json" \
  -d '{"jsonrpc": "2.0", "method": "tools/list", "id": 2}'

Security model

Full security architecture: royalplugins.com/support/royal-mcp/

Project status

• Active maintenance — releases roughly weekly. See releases for changelog.

• MCP spec compliance — implements the Streamable HTTP transport (2025-11-25).

• Issues — github.com/royalplugins/royal-mcp/issues. Customer-impact issues are typically acknowledged within 24h and triaged with version targets.

• Contributing — PRs welcome. The plugin source is committed to both this repo and the wp.org SVN trunk; releases are coordinated through the wp.org review process.

Further reading

• Editing Elementor with Claude: The Four Workflows That Work Today — the four real architectures for AI-editing Elementor pages and when to reach for which. User-facing version with prompts, examples, and a video demo of the clone-and-customize flow.

• Editing Elementor with Claude: 4 MCP Architectures — engineer's cut on Hashnode. The PHP under the hood of elementor_clone_page, the six tool signatures, and the HTTP-Basic-vs-OAuth-2.1 auth-model tradeoff.

Related projects

• GuardPress — WordPress security hardening

• SiteVault — WordPress backups and migration

• ForgeCache — Caching and performance

• FormForge — Form builder with PDF generation

• SEObolt — SEO toolkit for WordPress

License

GPLv2 or later — see LICENSE or the GNU site.

Royal MCP is provided as-is. API keys protect your endpoints; guard them like any other credential. You are responsible for the content, commands, and actions any AI platform is allowed to perform on your WordPress site.