Cowboy MCP – Free MCP Server with Undo for Claude & ChatGPT

Description

Cowboy MCP connects your WordPress site to Claude, ChatGPT, Cursor, Gemini or any other AI agent, so your AI assistant can run the site for you – and you can undo anything it changed. It is a free, open-source, secure WordPress MCP server (Model Context Protocol) that runs inside your own site: no relay, no account, no Pro tier. The agent talks straight to your site.

Stop clicking around wp-admin. Just tell your AI what you want.

• 💬 Do everything by chat – create and edit posts and pages, run your WooCommerce shop, manage users and menus, tidy the media library, change settings, and fix errors when they crop up.
• ↩️ Undo any change – a per-change undo journal and one-click database checkpoints let you roll back a single edit or the entire site.
• 🔄 Updates plugins & themes safely – backup first, health check after, one-command undo if anything breaks.
• 🛡️ Secure by default – safe mode confirms before anything destructive, you can preview any change before it runs, every key can be scoped to read-only, and every action is written to an audit log.
• 🆓 Free and open source – every tool included, with deep WooCommerce, Gutenberg, ACF, Elementor, Wordfence and SEO support. No Pro tier, no credits, no usage meter.
• 🔒 Your data stays yours – self-hosted, no accounts, no relay, no phone-home. Your agent connects to your site; nothing leaves your server.
• 🔌 Works with your AI assistant – Claude, ChatGPT, Cursor, GitHub Copilot, Codex, Gemini, Claude Code and any MCP client. Set up in about two minutes, on a live site or a local one.

“More access than any other MCP offers, easy to use, LOVE the change journal and the checkpoints – safe if you break something, without having to run back ups on the host or yet another plugin.” – a WordPress.org reviewer

Ask in plain language – “publish these three drafts,” “why is the checkout page 500-ing,” “bump every Summer Sale price 20%,” “clear the cache and re-check site health” – and your agent gets it done. Most WordPress AI plugins let an assistant write blog posts; Cowboy MCP lets your agent actually run the site, including WP-CLI, files, the database, error logs and diagnostics.

Try it without installing anything: click Live Preview above to open a throwaway WordPress Playground site with Cowboy MCP already active.

What is a WordPress MCP server?

MCP (Model Context Protocol) is the open standard AI assistants use to work with other software. A WordPress MCP server gives Claude, ChatGPT or any MCP-capable agent a set of typed, permission-checked actions on your site – publish a post, update a product, fix an error – instead of you copy-pasting between a chat window and wp-admin. Cowboy MCP is that server, installed like any other plugin.

What you can do with it

• Manage content by chat – draft, edit, schedule, and publish posts and pages; upload media; sort categories and tags; build navigation menus.
• Edit pages block by block – your agent reads any page as a Gutenberg block tree and makes surgical edits: update a heading, move a section, swap a pattern. On block themes it can edit Site Editor templates and global styles too – all undoable.
• Run the back office – add and edit users, change roles, and tidy the media library: find every image missing alt text and fix it in one go. Deleted media is recoverable, and the site can never be left without an administrator.
• Run your store – update WooCommerce products, prices, orders, refunds, coupons and inventory in bulk; pull sales reports.
• Fix things that break – read error logs, test emails and HTTP requests, inspect hooks and REST routes, check transients and rewrite rules, and repair database tables. No SSH required.
• Do the developer stuff – run WP-CLI commands, edit files in wp-content, and take site snapshots before big changes.
• Vibe code your site – describe the theme tweak or feature you want; your agent writes the code, checks the error log and fixes what it broke – with undo and checkpoints behind it.
• Keep SEO tidy – read, write and audit Yoast SEO, Rank Math, All in One SEO or SEOPress meta across the site with one vocabulary.
• Roll back a post – list a post’s revisions, see a git-style diff of what changed, and restore any revision (the restore itself is undoable).
• Run your events – create and edit The Events Calendar events, venues and organizers; with Events Calendar Pro, manage recurring series and cancel single dates.
• Plug into the WordPress Abilities API – every tool is also a cowboy-mcp/* ability (with safe mode, the audit log and undo still in front), and abilities other plugins register become tools for your agent.
• Works on any host – shared hosting, managed WordPress, a VPS or a local dev site. Nothing to install beyond the plugin, and no WordPress.com account or Jetpack plan needed.

Tool coverage

Up to 184 tools. The core set is always on; integrations light up automatically when their plugin is active. Your agent sees two gateway tools (cowboy_discover and cowboy_run) and finds the rest on demand, so a big toolset never crowds its context.

• Content – posts, pages and custom post types (5) · taxonomies (4) · comments (4) · media (4) · menus (6) · options (1) · revisions: list, diff and restore (3)
• Gutenberg MCP – block tree read/edit with path addressing, block types, patterns, Site Editor templates and template parts, global styles, navigations (15; 8 on classic themes)
• Site administration – users and roles (5) · plugins (6) · themes (5) · files in wp-content (4) · database health and repair (5) · WP-CLI, site info and search-replace (3) · site health (1)
• Diagnostics – error log, HTTP and email tests, hooks, transients, REST routes, thumbnails, rewrite rules, snapshot, Connection Doctor (10)
• Safety – list changes, undo a change, create/list/restore/delete database checkpoints (6) · batch execution and audit-log retrieval (2)
• WooCommerce MCP – products and variations, orders and refunds, customers, coupons, tax and shipping settings, reports (40)
• Wordfence – scans, blocks, firewall, live traffic, activity, settings (17)
• ACF MCP – field groups, fields, values, repeaters (9) · Elementor MCP – templates, page content, global styles, widgets (7)
• Events – The Events Calendar events, venues, organizers (11) plus Events Calendar Pro recurrence and occurrences (2)
• SEO MCP – Yoast SEO, Rank Math, All in One SEO and SEOPress meta read/write/audit (4) · Cache – WP Rocket, LiteSpeed Cache, W3 Total Cache (4) · Forms – WPForms, Gravity Forms, Contact Form 7 (1)

Plus 17 read-only MCP resources, 4 resource templates and 8 guided workflow prompts (site audit, troubleshooting, SEO, security hardening, performance and more).

Connect Claude Code to WordPress

Generate an API key under Settings > Cowboy MCP, then run one command in your terminal:

claude mcp add --transport http your-site https://yoursite.com/wp-json/cowboy-mcp/v1/endpoint --header "Authorization: Bearer YOUR_API_KEY"

The Connection tab shows this command pre-filled with your site’s endpoint. Ask Claude Code to “list my draft posts” and it will call the matching tool.

Connect Claude to WordPress (claude.ai and Claude Desktop)

No terminal and no key to paste: turn on the Desktop Connector under Settings > Cowboy MCP > Settings, add your site’s endpoint as a custom connector in the Claude desktop or web app, and approve the sign-in on your own site as an administrator. The consent screen lets you choose full access, read-only, or a hand-picked list of tools. This is a standard OAuth 2.1 flow and needs a public HTTPS site.

Connect ChatGPT to WordPress

ChatGPT connects with the same one-click sign-in. You need ChatGPT on the web with a Plus, Pro, Business, Enterprise or Edu plan, and a public HTTPS site, because ChatGPT connects from OpenAI’s servers.

1. On your site, turn on the Desktop Connector under Settings > Cowboy MCP, open the ChatGPT panel on the Connection tab and copy your connection link. If “New connections” shows as disabled there, click Enable for 30 minutes.
2. In ChatGPT, open Settings > Security and login and turn on Developer mode. On Business and Enterprise workspaces an admin has to allow Developer mode first.
3. Go to Plugins, click + and choose Create MCP App. Paste your connection link as the MCP server URL and choose OAuth.
4. ChatGPT opens a sign-in page on your site. Review it and click Approve.
5. In a chat, open the + menu, pick Developer mode and select your site.

Connect Cursor, VS Code and GitHub Copilot, Windsurf, Cline and Zed

Add one block to your editor’s MCP config (for Cursor, ~/.cursor/mcp.json):

{
  "mcpServers": {
    "your-site": {
      "url": "https://yoursite.com/wp-json/cowboy-mcp/v1/endpoint",
      "headers": { "Authorization": "Bearer YOUR_API_KEY" }
    }
  }
}

In VS Code, add the same URL and header as an HTTP server in .vscode/mcp.json (under servers rather than mcpServers) and GitHub Copilot’s agent mode can use it. Any client that speaks Streamable HTTP with a Bearer header works the same way.

Connect Codex CLI

export COWBOY_MCP_API_KEY="YOUR_API_KEY"
codex mcp add your-site --url https://yoursite.com/wp-json/cowboy-mcp/v1/endpoint --bearer-token-env-var COWBOY_MCP_API_KEY

Connect Gemini CLI

gemini mcp add --transport http your-site https://yoursite.com/wp-json/cowboy-mcp/v1/endpoint --header "Authorization: Bearer YOUR_API_KEY"

n8n, Opencode and other MCP clients

Cowboy MCP is a standard Streamable HTTP MCP server (JSON-RPC 2.0). Point any MCP client – n8n, Opencode, LibreChat, your own agent – at /wp-json/cowboy-mcp/v1/endpoint with an Authorization: Bearer header.

Local development sites

Local, Studio, MAMP, DevKinsta, wp-env, Docker – it works the same. Terminal tools connect with an API key, no public URL or tunnel needed; Claude Desktop uses the mcp-remote bridge shown on the Connection tab. Only claude.ai and ChatGPT need a public HTTPS address.

Secure by design: built for live sites

You are handing an AI real control, so Cowboy MCP is built to keep you in charge:

• Safe mode (on by default) – destructive tools refuse to run until the agent resends the call with explicit confirmation, and the refusal includes a preview of what would have happened.
• Dry run – every non-read-only tool accepts a dry-run flag that reports exactly what would change without touching anything.
• Per-change undo journal – before-state snapshots for every journaled change; roll back one edit from the Activity tab or by asking your agent (seven days by default), with conflict detection.
• Database checkpoints – one-click database snapshots, restorable in one click, taken automatically before plugin and theme updates and mutating WP-CLI commands (tables only, not uploads or code).
• Safe plugin and theme updates – file backup first, database checkpoint, then a health check that automatically restores the previous version if the site breaks.
• Audit log – every tool call, error and authentication event, with key, tool, arguments and result, on the Logs tab; pruned after 30 days.
• AI agent permissions – each API key and each OAuth connection can be full access, read-only, or a custom list of tools; a read-only key cannot write even if the agent tries.
• Hashed keys, rate limits, origin checks – keys are shown once and stored as one-way hashes, requests are rate-limited per key (120/minute by default), and requests from unknown browser origins are rejected.
• Guardrails you cannot talk your way past – a denylist of sensitive options, dangerous SQL and WP-CLI commands, SSRF protection, file writes confined to wp-content with a PHP syntax check, and last-administrator protection. Power mode lifts some of these for the rare job that needs it, and only a human can switch it on in wp-admin – the agent can never grant itself more power.
• Connection Doctor – a one-click self-test that names the exact thing blocking a connection (HTTPS, REST, OAuth discovery, Cloudflare, firewalls, caching) and gives you a report to paste into a support topic.

How Cowboy MCP is different

• Nothing in the middle. Some WordPress MCP products route requests through their own cloud relay, meter actions in credits, or need a hosted account or paid plan. Cowboy MCP runs on your server, on any host: no account, no relay, no quota.
• Every tool is free. Some plugins gate the useful tools – plugins, themes, the database, WooCommerce – behind a Pro licence. Cowboy MCP ships all of them, GPL-licensed, with no paid tier.
• Typed tools with undo, not a PHP shell. Tools that let an agent execute arbitrary PHP are built for development copies. Cowboy MCP gives the agent typed tools wrapped in safe mode, dry run, undo and checkpoints, so it can be trusted on the site that pays the bills. (Want the comparison? See Cowboy MCP vs Novamira.)
• A full safety net, not just an undo button. Many MCP plugins now promise undo – often a time-limited token, or edits made on a duplicate first. Cowboy MCP keeps a per-change journal with conflict detection, takes whole-database checkpoints, restores plugin and theme updates automatically if the site breaks, and puts dry run, safe mode and an always-on audit log in front of all of it – so you can preview what will happen, see what did, and reverse one change or all of them.
• A complete server today, wired into the official pieces. The Abilities API and the official MCP adapter are a framework, not a turnkey server. Cowboy MCP is the turnkey server – install, generate a key, connect – and on WordPress 6.9+ it bridges both ways. Works on WordPress 6.2 or later with no Composer, Node.js or build step.

Setup guides for every client, the security model and head-to-head comparisons live at cowboymcp.com.

Works with

Integrations that light up automatically: WooCommerce, Gutenberg and the Site Editor, Yoast SEO, Rank Math, All in One SEO, SEOPress, The Events Calendar (and Events Calendar Pro), Advanced Custom Fields (ACF), Elementor, Wordfence, WP Rocket, LiteSpeed Cache, W3 Total Cache, WPForms, Gravity Forms and Contact Form 7.

External services

Cowboy MCP sends no telemetry and makes no calls home. The only outbound connections are to WordPress.org, when your agent installs or updates plugins or themes, and any HTTP requests you explicitly ask your agent to make with the HTTP-request tool. Your AI client connects directly to your site; no third-party server sits in between.

Support and reviews

Questions and connection problems: post in the support forum and paste the Connection Doctor report – topics are usually answered within a day. Bugs and feature requests: GitHub issues. If Cowboy MCP saves you time, a review helps other site owners find it.

Technical details