WP Rocket MCP: Manage WordPress Caching From Your AI Assistant

WP Rocket is the caching plugin most people reach for to speed up WordPress. Its newest feature changes how you work with it.

Instead of clicking through settings screens, you can now ask an AI assistant to read your configuration, suggest improvements, and even apply them for you. It works through the Model Context Protocol (MCP) and the WordPress Abilities API.

The feature left beta with WP Rocket 3.23 on July 9, 2026, and 3.23.1 followed on July 23 with a one-click OAuth connection for Claude. Both are stable releases, and MCP access is included in every WP Rocket license at no extra cost.

This guide explains what the WP Rocket MCP integration is, what it can do, and how to set it up. By the end, a client like Claude, Codex, or Cursor can manage your caching and performance in plain language.

I checked this guide against a recorded session on October 4, 2026: WP Rocket 3.23.5.1 on WordPress 7.1.2, connected to a staging site with an application password.

Skip to the setup steps

What Is the WP Rocket MCP Integration?

The Model Context Protocol (MCP) is a standard that lets an AI assistant connect to outside tools and data. Anthropic introduced it in late 2024, and many AI apps now support it.

The Model Context Protocol is an open standard for connecting AI assistants to the systems where data lives. Anthropic describes it as a “USB-C port for AI applications”, one standard way to plug a model into many tools.

WP Rocket builds on the WordPress Abilities API. That is a way for a plugin to register actions other software can call, such as “read the settings” or “change a setting”.

WP Rocket registers a small set of these actions. Its bundled MCP Adapter then makes them available to any connected AI client.

In plain terms: WP Rocket describes what it can do, and your AI assistant calls those actions for you.

What You Can Do With It

As of 3.23.5.1, WP Rocket registers twelve abilities in three groups: options, insights, and cache. Every ability name is namespaced with a wp-rocket/ prefix, and that full name is what the assistant uses when it runs one.

The two you will use most are wp-rocket/get-options and wp-rocket/set-option. They register under a category called wp-rocket-options. The six insights abilities read from Rocket Insights, so they return useful data only once you have Rocket Insights collecting scores for your site.

The four cache abilities register under wp-rocket-cache. Two of them clear the cache, either for a list of URLs or for the whole site, and both tell the assistant to confirm with you before it runs them. The other two report on Preload: the status of one URL, and how far the sitewide Preload queue is from done.

Other plugins can add their own abilities to the same endpoint. In my session, Yoast SEO registered yoast-seo/get-post-seo-data and yoast-seo/update-post-seo-data, so the assistant saw 14 abilities in total, not just WP Rocket’s.

Settings the Assistant Can and Cannot Reach

The wp-rocket/get-options ability does not return everything WP Rocket stores. On my test site it returned 54 of the 80 stored settings.

Some of the missing ones are missing on purpose. It never returns secrets: your license key and email, API keys, and the Cloudflare key. That is a good default, because those values never pass through the AI conversation.

It also hides some real performance settings, and wp-rocket/set-option cannot change them either. The write side accepts 61 settings.

If you ask the assistant about one of the hidden settings, it has no way to read or change it. Use the WP Rocket dashboard for those.

Every Write Asks for Confirmation

Before it changes a list-type setting, WP Rocket tells the assistant to read your settings first. That way it does not erase entries you already have, such as your list of URLs to exclude from caching.

List-type settings have two write modes. The default, update, adds entries to the existing list. The other, replace, overwrites the whole list, which is why reading first matters.

On top of that, the wp-rocket/set-option description tells the assistant to show you the setting with its current and new value, ask “Confirm this change?”, and wait for a clear yes. A request like “enable it” does not count as that yes.

Each write then returns the previous value and the new value, so every change leaves a record you can check.

Before You Start: Requirements

This is a new capability, so the pieces need to be recent. Here is what you need.

• WordPress 6.9 or newer. WP Rocket checks the WordPress version before it boots the MCP adapter, because the Abilities API landed in core 6.9. On anything older the endpoint simply never appears.
• WP Rocket 3.23 or newer for MCP, and 3.23.1 or newer if you want the OAuth connection for Claude. The plugin bundles the MCP Adapter itself, so you do not need to install a separate adapter plugin.
• An MCP client. Any Model Context Protocol app works: Claude Desktop, Claude on the web, Codex, or Cursor.
• An administrator account on the site you are connecting.
• Node.js, but only on Windows and only if you take the application password route in Step 3. The OAuth route needs nothing installed.

Step 1: Pick Your Endpoint

There is no code step anymore. Once you are on 3.23 or later, WP Rocket publishes the MCP endpoints itself and the abilities are already registered.

There are two endpoints, and which one you use decides how you authenticate.

If you use Claude, take the OAuth route. It is faster, there is no password to store, and you can revoke it from WordPress. Everyone else uses the application password route in Step 3.

Step 2: Connect Claude With OAuth

This is the path WP Rocket added in 3.23.1, and it is the one I would start with. You never touch a config file and you never generate a password.

1. In Claude, open Settings, then Connectors, then Add custom connector.
2. Give it a name, such as “WP Rocket”, and paste your endpoint URL: https://your-site.com/wp-json/mcp/mcp-oauth-server.
3. Leave the OAuth Client ID and Client Secret fields empty. WP Rocket handles registration for you, and filling these in is the most common way this setup fails.
4. Click Add, then Connect.
5. Your browser opens a WordPress authorization screen. Sign in as an administrator and approve access.
6. Ask Claude which WP Rocket abilities it can use, and check that its answer includes the wp-rocket/ abilities.

Step 3: Connect With an Application Password

Use this route for Codex, Cursor, or any client without built-in support for remote MCP servers. It points at /wp-json/mcp/mcp-adapter-default-server and authenticates with a WordPress application password.

1. Create an application password. In wp-admin, open Users, go to your profile, and scroll to Application Passwords. Name it “MCP”, generate it, and copy the value. WordPress shows it only once.
2. Add your site to the client. Open your client’s MCP configuration file (for example, claude_desktop_config.json for Claude Desktop or ~/.cursor/mcp.json for Cursor) and add the block below. It runs the @automattic/mcp-wordpress-remote proxy, which forwards requests to your site.

{
  "mcpServers": {
    "wp-rocket": {
      "command": "npx",
      "args": ["-y", "@automattic/mcp-wordpress-remote@latest"],
      "env": {
        "WP_API_URL": "https://your-site.com/wp-json/mcp/mcp-adapter-default-server",
        "WP_API_USERNAME": "your-username",
        "WP_API_PASSWORD": "your-application-password",
        "OAUTH_ENABLED": "false"
      }
    }
  }
}

Replace the values with your own: the endpoint URL for your domain, your WordPress username, and the application password you just created. Then restart the client.

The OAUTH_ENABLED line matters now that your site also runs an OAuth server on a neighboring route. Without it, the proxy may try to negotiate OAuth against an endpoint that expects basic authentication, and the connection fails with an unhelpful error.

On Windows, the npx command needs Node.js installed. On macOS it is usually already there.

To confirm it worked, ask the assistant which WP Rocket abilities it can use. Do not expect them in its tool list.

On this endpoint, the tool list in my session held three generic adapter tools: mcp-adapter-discover-abilities, mcp-adapter-get-ability-info, and mcp-adapter-execute-ability. The assistant finds the wp-rocket/ abilities through the first and runs them through the third.

If the client cannot reach the endpoint, check that you are on WP Rocket 3.23 or later and WordPress 6.9 or later. Below either version the endpoint is never registered, so the URL returns a 404 no matter what you put in the config.

Clients with built-in support for remote MCP servers can skip the proxy and point straight at the endpoint URL.

Step 4: Ask in Plain Language

Now you talk to your site instead of clicking through tabs. The assistant turns your request into the right ability, runs it, and reports back.

Here are prompts that map cleanly to the abilities:

• “What WP Rocket caching and file optimization settings are on right now?” runs wp-rocket/get-options.
• “Turn on lazy load for images and enable Remove Unused CSS.” reads your settings, then runs wp-rocket/set-option for each change once you confirm it.
• “What does WP Rocket recommend I improve on this site?” runs wp-rocket/get-recommendations.
• “Add my homepage to Rocket Insights, test it, and show the score.” runs wp-rocket/add-page-insights and wp-rocket/get-page-insights-score.

Because the assistant reads before it writes and asks before each change, you can also ask it to explain a setting first, then decide. To understand what each toggle actually changes, pair this with how to improve WordPress loading time.

How Rocket Insights Recommendations Work

The wp-rocket/get-recommendations ability returns WP Rocket’s own suggestions for your specific site, not generic tips. Each one carries a flag called mcp_actionable.

That flag tells the assistant whether it can apply the fix directly.

• mcp_actionable: true means the fix maps to a setting the assistant can change with wp-rocket/set-option, such as turning on lazy load.
• mcp_actionable: false means the fix needs a manual step, so the assistant should explain it rather than apply it.

The recommendations also report a status. If it is still loading, the assistant waits and retries. If it is completed, it shows the list.

This makes the flow feel like a review. You get a ranked list, and you approve the items you want. Many of them target your Core Web Vitals.

If You Manage Client Sites

This is where the integration stops being a novelty. WP Rocket built its own launch material around portfolio work, and that matches how I would actually use it.

Connect several sites as separate connectors, and you can ask one question across all of them. “Which of my sites has the worst Rocket Insights score, and what is the top recommendation for it?” replaces opening twenty dashboards.

A few patterns worth setting up:

• Roll a known-good configuration out. Read the settings from a site you have already tuned, then apply the same values elsewhere. Ask for a diff first so you can see what would change.
• Keep new pages tracked. When a client publishes a landing page, add it to Rocket Insights and test it in the same breath instead of remembering to do it later.
• Catch regressions before the client calls. Ask for the scores across your portfolio on a schedule and flag anything that dropped.
• Generate the monthly report. Pull scores and recommendations, then have the assistant write the summary you would have written by hand.

Remember the connector limit here. A free Claude plan caps you at one site, so portfolio work needs a paid plan. If you already script this kind of work, the WP Rocket filters and WP-CLI commands still cover cases MCP does not reach, such as clearing cache during a deployment.

What It Did in a Real Session

I used the MCP for a real task on a staging copy of this site. Uncached page renders had become slower after the move to WP Rocket, and I wanted to know whether one feature was to blame.

With wp-rocket/set-option, I toggled six features one at a time (cache_webp, defer_all_js, emoji, minify_google_fonts, cdn, and lazyload) and timed uncached renders after each change. All 22 writes succeeded, and each one returned its old and new value.

None of the six changed the render time. The cost was WP Rocket’s own startup, and finding that took tools outside the MCP.

That is the honest scope of the integration. It made the setting changes fast and logged, but it has no profiling and no view of the server. It can change settings; it cannot diagnose the server.

If your site runs on Cloudways, the hosting side has its own MCP server that does see server data, such as the slowest PHP requests and CPU graphs. I tested it read-only in how I connected Claude Code to Cloudways MCP.

It is also not fast per call. Every MCP call is a full WordPress request, and in my session each one took between about 1.1 and 1.9 seconds. That is fine for a handful of changes and slow for bulk work.

Use It Safely

The same power that makes this useful also means an assistant can change how your site loads. Treat AI-driven changes like any performance change: verify them.

A few options can break layout or scripts on some themes, especially Remove Unused CSS and delay JavaScript. Keep these habits.

• Work on a staging copy first, then apply the same changes to your live site once you have checked them.
• Ask the assistant to list exactly which options it changed, so you have a record.
• Clear the cache and check your key pages after changes.
• Revoke access when you are done. Delete the connector in Claude, or delete the application password in your WordPress profile.

Since 3.23 the abilities are exposed by default, so the filter that used to switch them on now works the other way around. If you want them off, on a client site or a site you do not want reachable this way, add this to a must-use plugin:

add_filter( 'rocket_enable_abilities', '__return_false' );

That unregisters all twelve abilities, including the cache group. The endpoint stays, but there is nothing behind it for WP Rocket.
One quick note, because the names cause confusion. WP Rocket is the caching plugin from WP Media covered here. Rocket.net is a separate hosting company with its own MCP integration. This guide is about the WP Rocket plugin.

FAQs

Common questions about the WP Rocket MCP integration:

Summary

WP Rocket’s MCP integration turns caching work into a conversation. It builds on the WordPress Abilities API and the Model Context Protocol.

A connected AI client can read most of your settings, surface recommendations for your site, and apply changes once you confirm them. It changes settings; it does not diagnose your server. On 3.23 and later there is no snippet to add: update the plugin, point your client at one of the two endpoints, and start on a staging site.

Used carefully, it is a fast way to keep WP Rocket tuned without hunting through tabs. If you want the same conversational workflow for measurement rather than configuration, the Chrome DevTools MCP server pairs well with it.