AI Abilities is a Premium Addons for Elementor feature that connects AI clients such as Claude, Cursor, and Codex to your WordPress site through a built-in MCP server. Each ability is one action the connected AI can perform on your site. This doc covers one of the Build abilities: Update Element Settings.
Update Element Settings lets your AI client change the settings of any element that already exists on a page: a widget, a container, or a v4 atomic element. It merges the settings you pass into the element’s current ones, so everything you do not mention stays exactly as it is.
This is the editing workhorse of the Build category. Where Insert Widget puts new elements on the page, this ability handles every “change this” request afterwards: new text, new colors, different spacing, a different layout direction.
At a Glance
| Category | Build |
| Access | Write |
| Destructive | No |
| MCP tool name | premium-addons/update-element-settings |
| Available since | Premium Addons v4.11.85 |
Before You Start
This ability is part of the AI Abilities feature. If you have not set it up yet, follow the Elementor AI Abilities (MCP Tools) Tutorial first to enable the feature and connect your AI client. The ability must also be switched on under Premium Addons → AI Abilities & MCP Config, in the Build category:
Use Cases
Restyle a page by prompt. Ask your AI client to “Update my homepage hero to match the new brand: heading color #0f766e, DM Sans, and 100px top padding.” The AI reads the page structure to find the elements, then updates each one’s settings while leaving the rest of the hero untouched.
Fix content across a page. Prompt “Change every button on my landing page that says ‘Sign up’ to ‘Start free trial’ and make them all #16a34a.” The AI walks the structure, finds the matching buttons, and updates them one by one.
Tune a widget you built earlier. After the AI builds a Premium Carousel, ask “Make the carousel autoplay every 4 seconds and show 3 slides on desktop.” The AI updates just those settings on the existing widget, without recreating it.
Good to Know
- The update is a partial merge with a minimum of one setting. Only the keys you pass change; every other setting keeps its current value.
- The AI finds element IDs and current settings with
premium-addons/get-page-structure, and setting keys withpremium-addons/get-widget-schema. - Classic (v3) elements take their native control keys, like background_background or flex_direction.
- Atomic (v4) elements take CSS properties in kebab-case (flex-direction, background), which are applied to the element’s local style class, plus content settings like the tag and CSS id. Plain values are wrapped into the format v4 stores automatically.
- Style updates on atomic elements land on the desktop variant of the element’s style class.
- Elementor validates atomic elements on save, so an invalid value is rejected with an error instead of being stored broken.
- If the element’s type is not registered on the site (a disabled widget, for instance), the ability reports that instead of attempting an update that could never persist.
Inputs
| Parameter | Required | Description |
|---|---|---|
post_id | Yes | The page, post, or template containing the element. |
element_id | Yes | The element to update. |
settings | Yes | The settings to change, merged into the element’s current settings. At least one key. |
Output
| Field | Description |
|---|---|
success | True when the element was updated and the page saved. |
element_id | The element that was updated. |
element_type | The element’s type, or the widget type for widgets. |
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