Connect Zed to your own WordPress site over the Model Context Protocol. Zed talks to your site directly — there is no relay in between, no account to create, and your credentials never leave your machine. Setup takes about a minute once MCP Manager is installed.
Free plugin · No account · Runs on your own server · Any WordPress host
Config file
~/.config/zed/settings.json
Top-level key
context_servers — not mcpServers
Zed calls them
Context servers, over an npx bridge
Before you start
You need AcrossAI MCP Manager installed and active on the WordPress site you want Zed to reach, plus an administrator account on that site. If you have not installed it yet, follow the Get Started guide first — it takes about a minute, and the MCP server ships bundled with the plugin.
You also need Node.js available on the machine running Zed, because the connection runs through an npx bridge. Nothing is installed permanently — npx fetches the bridge on demand. One piece of Zed vocabulary is worth learning before you open the config: Zed does not call these MCP servers. It calls them context servers, and that is the word used throughout its settings and its UI.
How to connect Zed to WordPress
Step 1
Open Quick Connect and choose Zed
In wp-admin go to AcrossAI → MCP, open the server you want to expose, and start Quick Connect. Pick Zed from the client list. Everything below is generated for you with your real site URL and username already filled in — the snippets here are only so you know what to expect.
Step 2
Generate an Application Password
Click Generate password in the wizard. This creates a standard WordPress Application Password — not your login password — scoped to this connection and revocable at any time from your user profile.
The password is shown once, at creation. Copy it whole, including the spaces — WordPress accepts them. If you lose it, generate a new one rather than trying to recover it.
Step 3
Merge the entry into ~/.config/zed/settings.json
Open the file from inside Zed — Cmd-, on macOS, Ctrl-, on Linux, or run zed: open settings from the command palette. Unlike most editors, Zed keeps all of its settings in this one file: your theme, your font size, your key bindings, your language servers. You are adding a key to it, not creating it.
Paste the generated entry under the top-level context_servers key, creating that key if it is not already there. The result looks like this, sitting alongside whatever else you have configured:
{
"theme": "One Dark",
"buffer_font_size": 15,
"context_servers": {
"your-site-mcp-adapter-default-server": {
"source": "custom",
"command": "npx",
"args": ["-y", "@automattic/mcp-wordpress-remote@latest"],
"env": {
"WP_API_URL": "https://example.com/wp-json/acrossai/mcp",
"WP_API_USERNAME": "your-wp-username",
"WP_API_PASSWORD": "xxxx xxxx xxxx xxxx xxxx xxxx"
}
}
}
}Do not paste the snippet over the whole file. Replacing settings.json wholesale wipes every editor preference you have set. Copy a backup first if you are unsure, and add only the context_servers block.
Step 4
Restart Zed and check the tools
Save the file and restart Zed so it picks up the new context server. Your site should appear in the agent panel’s context server list, and the toolsets it exposes become available in chat. Ask something harmless to confirm it is live — “Which plugins on this site need updating?” is a good first test.
What Zed can do once it is connected
With Abilities Manager installed alongside it, Zed reaches 350+ abilities across 14 toolsets — rising past 800 once it detects the plugins you already run. From inside your editor, without switching to a browser tab, it can:
- Read and edit content — posts, pages and any custom post type with their meta and revisions, and surgically edit a page’s block tree without rewriting the page.
- Debug a broken site — read the debug log with secrets redacted, check Site Health, list recent fatal errors and un-pause what WordPress auto-disabled.
- Inspect the database — schema and table sizes, index health, bloated autoloaded options, or
EXPLAINon a slow query. - Manage plugins, themes and core — search WordPress.org, install, update, roll back, and verify files against official checksums.
- Work with files — inside an allowlist you define, with a dangerous-extension blocklist and optional pre-image backups of everything it touches.
- Reach the plugins you already run — WooCommerce, Elementor, ACF, Rank Math, Yoast, WPCode and more, each registering only when that plugin is active.
Every ability runs WordPress’s own capability check for the calling user, so Zed can never do anything your account could not already do. See the full platform overview for the complete catalogue.
Frequently asked questions
Is connecting Zed to WordPress free?
Yes. AcrossAI MCP Manager and Abilities Manager are both free and GPL on WordPress.org, and there is no AcrossAI account to create. You use whichever model Zed is already configured with — AcrossAI never charges for AI inference, because none of it runs here.
Does my site data pass through AcrossAI servers?
No. Zed connects straight to your own domain and every request terminates at your /wp-json/ route. There is no relay, no gateway and no telemetry. Whatever Zed reads is still processed by your AI provider, so treat it as you would any other prompt.
Does it work on any WordPress host?
Yes, provided you can reach wp-admin. Shared hosting, VPS and managed WordPress all work, because everything runs inside your own install. MCP Manager needs WordPress 7.0 or later and PHP 8.1 or later; Abilities Manager needs WordPress 6.9 or later.
Can Zed break my site?
Every ability runs WordPress’s own capability check for the calling user, so Zed can never exceed what your account can already do. Higher-risk operations refuse to run without an explicit confirmation flag, file access is confined to an allowlist you define, and any ability can be disallowed site-wide.
How do I disconnect Zed again?
Revoke the Application Password from your WordPress user profile, or delete the entry from context_servers in ~/.config/zed/settings.json. Access is re-checked on every request, so revoking takes effect immediately even if the config is still on the machine.
Troubleshooting
You pasted a config under mcpServers and nothing happened
This is the single most common Zed mistake, and it is silent. Zed does not use the mcpServers key that Claude Desktop, Cursor and Windsurf use. It calls these context servers, and the top-level key is context_servers. A block under mcpServers is simply an unknown setting: Zed ignores it, reports no error, and shows no server. Rename the key to context_servers and restart.
If you copied the snippet from another client’s guide, check the nesting too — the server entry belongs one level inside context_servers, keyed by the server name.
Your theme, fonts and key bindings disappeared after editing the file
Zed has no separate MCP config file. ~/.config/zed/settings.json holds every editor preference you have ever set, so pasting the connection snippet over the whole file replaces all of them with a single context_servers key. Zed then falls back to its defaults, which looks like the editor has reset itself.
Undo in the open buffer and save if Zed still has the file open. Otherwise restore your backup, then merge the block in by hand rather than replacing the file. Zed also permits // comments in this file, so a strict JSON validator may report errors that are not real — a trailing comma or a missing brace, however, still stops Zed reading the file at all.
The context server appears but has no tools
That is the connection working and the catalogue being empty. Either Abilities Manager is not installed — MCP Manager will serve an empty catalogue quite happily — or the abilities exist but are not exposed to this particular server. Open AcrossAI → MCP, select the server, and check its Tools and Abilities tabs. After changing what a server exposes, restart Zed: MCP clients receive their tool list once, at connection time.
Authentication fails, or the request is refused
Application Passwords are shown once and are not your login password. Generate a fresh one from Quick Connect rather than retyping an old one, and copy it complete with spaces. If the request is being refused rather than failing, check the server’s access rules — a new server requires manage_options until you add a rule, and the gate fails closed. Access is also re-checked on every request, so a role change takes effect immediately even though the config has not changed.
npx is not found
The bridge runs through npx, which ships with Node.js. Install Node.js on the machine running Zed and restart it. Zed launched from the Dock or an application launcher does not inherit the PATH your shell sets up, so a Node installed through nvm, fnm or asdf is often invisible to it — in that case put the absolute path to npx in the command field.
Connect a different AI client
The same server works with every MCP client — only the config file and top-level key change. See the guides for Claude Desktop, Claude Code, Cursor, VS Code, GitHub Copilot, Windsurf, Codex and every other client.
Not installed yet?
Install MCP Manager on your site, then come back and run Quick Connect.