Manage AI and MCP settings in Jetpack

This guide explains how to use the Jetpack AI settings page to manage MCP (Model Context Protocol) access, control what external AI agents can read and write on your site, and connect an AI agent to your WordPress site.

What is MCP

Model Context Protocol (MCP) is an open standard that lets external AI agents, such as Claude, Cursor, and VS Code, connect to your WordPress site. Once connected, an AI agent can read your site’s content, create and edit posts and pages, manage media, and more, based on the permissions you grant.

Jetpack 15.8 introduces a dedicated AI settings page in WP Admin where you can enable MCP access, control read and write permissions, connect an AI agent, and view an activity log of actions taken by your AI agents.

Requirements

For self-hosted Jetpack sites, MCP access requires a Jetpack Complete or Jetpack AI plan.

Enable MCP access

Access to MCP is disabled by default. To activate access:

1. Log in to your site’s WP Admin.
2. Go to Jetpack → AI in the left sidebar.
3. Under External AI agent access, toggle Enable MCP access to on.

Once enabled, the page displays four sections: Read, Write, Connect external AI agent, and Activity log.

Manage read permissions

Read permissions control what information AI agents can retrieve from your site. To configure read permissions:

1. Go to Jetpack → AI.
2. Click Read.
3. Toggle individual categories on or off. Available read categories include:
   • Site: general site information such as settings and configuration.
   • Posts: published and draft post content.
   • Pages: published and draft page content.
   • Design: theme details, design tokens (colors, fonts, spacing), and registered blocks.
   • Domains: domain information associated with your site.

Each category can be enabled or disabled independently. You can also use the toggle at the top of the list to enable or disable all read permissions at once.

Manage write permissions

Write permissions control what changes AI agents can make to your site. To configure write permissions:

1. Go to Jetpack → AI.
2. Click Write.
3. Toggle individual categories on or off. Available write categories include:
   • Site: general site information such as settings and configuration, including Jetpack connection status, sitemap status, shortlinks, and newsletter settings (when enabled – see the section Jetpack capabilities available to AI agents below).
   • Posts: published and draft post content, plus Jetpack Forms data.
   • Pages: published and draft page content.
   • Design: theme details, design tokens (colors, fonts, spacing), and registered blocks.
   • Domains: domain information associated with your site.

Every write action performed by an AI agent requires your explicit confirmation before it executes.

Connect an external AI agent

After enabling MCP access, you can connect an AI agent to your site:

1. Go to Jetpack → AI.
2. Click Connect external AI agent.
3. Select the AI agent you would like to connect. The available options are:
   • Claude
   • Claude Code
   • Cursor
   • VS Code
   • Continue
   • Other
4. Follow the setup instructions displayed for your selected agent. Each agent has its own connection steps.

For agents that support it, you can copy the MCP server configuration from the provided manual configuration textarea and paste it into your agent’s settings file.

View the activity log

The activity log shows recent actions taken by AI agents on your site. To view it:

1. Go to Jetpack → AI.
2. Click Activity log.

The log displays a record of MCP tool executions, including what action was performed and when. This helps you monitor what your connected AI agents have done on your site.

Jetpack capabilities available to AI agents

When you enable MCP access, connected AI agents can act on the Jetpack features below. Each capability is gated by the read or write permission you grant in the AI settings page, granting “Read: Site” does not by itself grant write access to any of the items in this section.

Capabilities always available

These capabilities ship enabled for every site running Jetpack:

• Jetpack Forms: connected AI agents can list the forms on your site, read existing form configurations and responses, and (with write access) create, edit, and delete forms.
• (more to come).

Capabilities available when enabled by a site administrator

These capabilities are off by default. A site administrator (or a developer working on the site) can enable them by setting the `jetpack_wp_abilities_enabled` filter to `true` in a custom plugin or theme:

• Jetpack connection status: read the current connection state of your site to Jetpack (connected, disconnected, plan tier).
• Jetpack Sitemaps: read the status of your site’s sitemap, including the last time it was generated.
• Jetpack Shortlinks: read the shortlinks registered for posts and pages on your site.
• Jetpack Newsletter: read newsletter settings, subscriber configuration, and related Newsletter data.

When the filter is off, these capabilities are not exposed to AI agents even if you have granted “Read: Site” or “Write: Site”.

Capabilities already available before this update

Stats, Backup, Boost, Modules, and Related Posts data were already accessible to connected AI agents before this update and are not affected by the jetpack_wp_abilities_enabled filter.