The MCP Adapter Plugin Is Now on WordPress.org: Add the Missing UI with MCP Manager

The MCP Adapter plugin is now on WordPress.org. As of 2 October 2026, the official WordPress MCP Adapter, the package that turns your site into an MCP server for Claude, ChatGPT, Cursor and other AI clients, can be installed from Plugins › Add New like any other plugin, starting with version 0.7.0.

That is good news, and it corrects a lot of out-of-date advice. Google’s AI Overview still says the adapter is not in the plugin directory, and the Learn WordPress lesson still tells you to download a zip from GitHub. Both predate the listing.

But installing the MCP Adapter plugin is only half the job. Activate it and look for its settings page: there isn’t one. The adapter is a developer layer with no admin screens. That gap is exactly what MCP Manager fills. It is our free plugin that gives the MCP Adapter a proper UI in wp-admin, and it works with the MCP Adapter plugin from WordPress.org.

What the MCP Adapter plugin does

The Model Context Protocol (MCP) is the open standard AI assistants use to discover and call tools in other systems. Any MCP client, whether Claude, ChatGPT, Cursor, VS Code or Copilot, can talk to any MCP server without custom integration code.

The WordPress MCP Adapter makes your site one of those servers. It takes the abilities registered through the WordPress Abilities API, which has been in core since WordPress 6.9, and presents them to AI clients as MCP tools, resources and prompts. It handles protocol negotiation, authentication, permission checks and errors, over HTTP for remote clients and STDIO for local ones.

It is an official project of the WordPress AI team, part of the AI Building Blocks for WordPress initiative, developed on GitHub. The directory listing changes how you get it and how it updates, not who builds it.

How to install the MCP Adapter plugin from WordPress.org

You need WordPress 6.9 or newer and PHP 7.4 or newer. In wp-admin, go to Plugins › Add New, search for MCP Adapter, install and activate. Or from the command line:

# Before: download the release zip from GitHub
wp plugin install https://github.com/WordPress/mcp-adapter/releases/latest/download/mcp-adapter.zip --activate

# Now: install the MCP Adapter plugin straight from WordPress.org
wp plugin install mcp-adapter --activate

The practical win is updates. A directory plugin shows up on your normal Updates screen and works with auto-updates, so you no longer swap zip files by hand on every release.

The catch: the MCP Adapter has no UI

Activate the MCP Adapter plugin and you get a working endpoint at /wp-json/mcp/mcp-adapter-default-server. You do not get a menu item, a settings page or a single screen. Everything else is up to you, in code:

• Extra servers are registered in PHP on the mcp_adapter_init hook, with a dozen positional arguments for routes, transports, handlers and the abilities to expose.
• Client configs are JSON you write yourself, and every client wants a slightly different format, file location and top-level key.
• Credentials mean creating an Application Password in your profile and pasting it into that JSON by hand.
• Who can connect is whoever can log in. There is no screen to limit MCP access to particular users.

Here is what a hand-written client config looks like for a local site over STDIO. Multiply it by every client, every site and every teammate:

{
  "mcpServers": {
    "wordpress-default": {
      "command": "wp",
      "args": [
        "--path=/path/to/your/wordpress/site",
        "mcp-adapter",
        "serve",
        "--server=mcp-adapter-default-server",
        "--user=admin"
      ]
    }
  }
}

That is fine for a developer wiring up one site. It is a wall for an agency handing a site to a client, a content team that wants Claude to draft posts, or anyone who expects WordPress to have a screen for things.

MCP Manager: the UI layer for the MCP Adapter

MCP Manager is a free plugin on WordPress.org that adds a complete admin interface on top of the MCP Adapter. The adapter stays the engine. MCP Manager is the dashboard.

On top of that, MCP Manager generates one-time Application Passwords per client, supports HTTP, STDIO and WP-CLI transports, records approved, successful and failed connection attempts per server, and includes Quick Setup, which takes you from install to a connected AI client in about a minute. Everything runs inside your own WordPress install, with no relay or third-party cloud in between.

MCP Adapter alone vs MCP Adapter with MCP Manager

Set up the MCP Adapter with a UI in four steps

One thing to know on a fresh site: the MCP Adapter exposes abilities, it does not create them. If your site registers only a few, a connected AI client will have only a few things it can do. Abilities Manager, also free, adds hundreds of ready-made abilities for posts, blocks, media, users, plugins, SEO and more, so the client has real work it can do from the first minute.

What changed in MCP Adapter 0.7.0

The first WordPress.org release is not cosmetic. If you only use the default server with standard clients, you just update. If you built custom integrations, read the 0.7.0 migration guide first.

For plugin developers: depend on the plugin

With bundling deprecated, plugins that ship MCP features should declare the MCP Adapter plugin as a dependency. WordPress then prompts the site owner to install it, and one shared copy serves every plugin on the site:

/**
 * Plugin Name: My Plugin
 * Requires Plugins: mcp-adapter
 */

Register abilities rather than servers where you can. An ability with meta.public set to true reaches the default server automatically, and meta.mcp.public opts it in or out of MCP specifically. Site owners running MCP Manager can then choose which of your abilities each server exposes, without touching your code.

Related guides

• UI for MCP Adapter: managing MCP servers, tools and permissions in wp-admin
• MCP Adapter vs MCP Manager, side by side
• WordPress MCP Adapter memory limit fix, for sites with large ability registries
• WordPress AI Plugin Showdown, where Jonathan Bossenger tested MCP Manager live

Sources

• MCP Adapter on WordPress.org, including the 0.7.0 changelog
• WordPress/mcp-adapter on GitHub
• The MCP Adapter, Learn WordPress

The MCP Adapter landing on WordPress.org makes it a plugin any site owner can find and keep updated. Giving it a UI makes it something any site owner can actually use. Install the MCP Adapter plugin, add MCP Manager, and your WordPress site is ready for AI in about a minute.