Shim MCP — WordPress MCP Server for Claude Code, Cursor, and any MCP client

A self-contained Model Context Protocol (MCP) server for WordPress, built for developers. Install one plugin and your WordPress site becomes an MCP server that Claude Code, Claude Desktop, Cursor, Windsurf, Cline, or any MCP-compatible AI client can drive — 56 abilities across posts, pages, media, users, plugins, menus, widgets, comments, options and system management.

No companion plugins. No cloud relay. No account anywhere. Your site talks to your AI client and nothing sits in between.

Who this is for

Developers who live in a terminal or an editor.

If you run wp commands, keep VS Code open all day, and want Claude Code or Cursor to work on a local WordPress install the same way it works on the rest of your codebase — that's the case this was built for. It works fine as a remote server for a production site too, but the local-first path is the one that got the attention.

Two ways to connect

1. Local, over stdio (WP-CLI) — the reason this plugin exists.

wp shim-mcp serve --user=admin

That runs the MCP server as a plain stdio process: JSON-RPC in on STDIN, responses out on STDOUT. No HTTP, no ports, no tunnel, no application password, no OAuth dance. Point Claude Code or Cursor at that command and it connects the way any other local MCP server does.

Worth being precise about what's different here, because several WordPress MCP plugins mention WP-CLI. In those, WP-CLI is a tool the AI can call — the model asks the remote server to run a wp command on your behalf, over an authenticated HTTP connection. Useful, but the connection is still remote, still HTTP, still needs a token.

Shim uses WP-CLI as the transport itself. The server runs as a local process on your machine and speaks MCP over a pipe. There is no HTTP request, no token to issue or revoke, and nothing listening on a port. For a site you have checked out locally, that removes the entire authentication surface rather than securing it.

2. Remote, over HTTP — for sites you aren't sitting in front of.

Generate an application password from Tools → Shim MCP, copy the config snippet, done. Streamable HTTP transport, MCP spec-compliant, capability-checked on every call.

Why "Shim"

In systems programming, a shim is a thin layer that sits between two interfaces so they can work together without either side changing.

That is exactly what this is. WordPress speaks the Abilities API. AI clients speak MCP. Shim translates between the two and does nothing else.

The name is a promise about scope. It is not an AI product. It does not bundle a chatbot, a content generator, a credits system, or a dashboard that wants to become your workflow. It does not phone home. It is the adapter, not the appliance — and when WordPress core ships the Abilities API natively, the plugin gets smaller, not bigger.

What makes it different

• The MCP server runs over stdio. Others expose WP-CLI as a tool reachable through a remote HTTP connection; here WP-CLI is the transport, running locally with no port, no token and no HTTP layer at all.
• Genuinely self-contained. The MCP server and all 56 abilities ship in one plugin. No companion plugin, no framework, no service to sign up for.
• Abilities API native. Every ability is registered through WordPress's own wp_register_ability(). Nothing lives in a private tool registry, so abilities registered by other plugins are exposed too, automatically, with no adapter code.
• Per-object permission checks, not just blanket ones. Every ability declares a capability, and every ability that touches a specific object re-checks the per-object capability (edit_post, delete_post, read_post, edit_user, delete_user, edit_comment) against that object before reading or mutating it. A contributor's client cannot edit an editor's post. Holding edit_posts is not treated as permission to edit any post.
• 56 abilities, deliberately. This is not a race to the largest tool count. Every ability is documented with its required capability in the abilities reference.
• Nothing leaves your server. No proxy, no relay, no telemetry, no vendor account.
• The one dangerous ability is off by default. Rewriting wp-config.php stays disabled unless you opt in explicitly with define( 'SHIM_MCP_ALLOW_CONFIG_WRITES', true );.

Quick start

Local development (stdio)

git clone https://github.com/justadityaraj/shim-mcp.git wp-content/plugins/shim-mcp
wp plugin activate shim-mcp
wp shim-mcp serve --user=admin

Then register it with your client. For Claude Code:

claude mcp add shim -- wp shim-mcp serve --user=admin --path=/full/path/to/wordpress

Remote site (HTTP)

1. Install the plugin — search for Shim MCP under Plugins → Add New, or download it from the WordPress.org listing.
2. Go to Tools → Shim MCP and click Generate to create an application password.
3. Copy the config snippet shown on the dashboard into your AI client's config.

Ready-made snippets for Claude Code, Claude Desktop and Cursor are on the dashboard.

Available commands

wp shim-mcp serve [--server=<server-id>] [--user=<id|login|email>]   # run the MCP server over stdio
wp shim-mcp list  [--format=<format>]                                # list registered MCP servers

Features

• 56 WordPress abilities across content, media, users, plugins, menus, widgets, comments, options and system management
• Plugin abilities cover listing, activating, deactivating and deleting what is already installed; installing new plugins is deliberately out of scope
• MCP protocol 2024-11-05, 2025-03-26 and 2025-06-18 with automatic version negotiation
• Two transports: stdio over WP-CLI, and Streamable HTTP
• Admin dashboard with application password generation and revocation
• Config export for Claude Code, Claude Desktop and Cursor
• Detects other MCP server plugins and warns when two would compete

Requirements

• WordPress 6.9 or higher (for the Abilities API, which core ships from 6.9)
• PHP 8.0 or higher
• WP-CLI, for the stdio transport only

Documentation

• Setup Guide — installation, client configuration, troubleshooting
• Abilities Reference — all 56 abilities with their required capabilities
• Security Policy — the trust model, and how to report a vulnerability

Status

Approved and live on the WordPress.org Plugin Directory. Install it directly from Plugins → Add New in wp-admin, or download the zip from the releases page here.

It is feature-complete and the abilities are documented, but it has not yet run across a broad range of hosting environments. Issues and reports are welcome.

Verification

Verified on WordPress 7.1 / PHP 8.5.9 — activation, the admin dashboard, the MCP handshake, all 56 abilities registering through core's native Abilities API, and a full create, update, patch, read and delete cycle.

Check	Result
WordPress Plugin Check (all categories)	0 errors, 0 warnings
PHP_CodeSniffer, WordPress-Extra	0 violations
PHPStan level 5 with WordPress stubs	0 issues
php -l, all files	pass
PHPCompatibility, PHP 8.0 to 8.5	0 issues

Plugin Check is an automated scan of the directory's coding requirements. Passing it says the code meets those standards; it is not a review outcome and implies no endorsement by WordPress.org.

Development version

Stable releases come from main and are what the WordPress.org listing serves. Work in progress lives on dev.

If you want to try unreleased changes, take the newest pre-release from the releases page — those are built the same way as stable releases and install normally through Plugins → Add New → Upload Plugin.

To track dev directly instead:

git clone -b dev https://github.com/justadityaraj/shim-mcp.git wp-content/plugins/shim-mcp

Clone into a directory named exactly shim-mcp. GitHub's "Download ZIP" button produces a shim-mcp-dev folder, which WordPress treats as a second, separate plugin.

Pre-release builds are unreleased by definition: they have not been through the release checks, and they are not on WordPress.org. Do not run them on a production site.

Maintainer

Built and maintained by Aditya Raj Singh at BNCW Enterprises.

Credits

Shim MCP builds its protocol layer on WordPress's own MCP work: everything under includes/Server/ is derived from the WordPress MCP Adapter (GPL-2.0). The abilities are registered through WordPress's own Abilities API, which core ships from 6.9. The 56 abilities, the admin dashboard, the WP-CLI stdio bridge and the packaging are original to this plugin. See CREDITS.md for the full breakdown.

License

GPL-2.0-or-later. See LICENSE for the full text.