The AI Abilities documentation uses the word MCP on nearly every page, and mostly assumes you already know what it means. This page is the missing piece. It covers what the Model Context Protocol is, how one sentence you type turns into a change on your page, and what Premium Addons for Elementor built on top of the standard.
What is MCP (Model Context Protocol)?
MCP, short for Model Context Protocol, is an open standard for connecting an AI application to an outside system. It defines how the two introduce themselves, how the system advertises what it can do, and how the AI asks for one of those things to happen.
Before it existed, an AI assistant that claimed to work with your website did one of two things. It guessed at your site from whatever you had described in the chat, or it wrote code and left you to paste it somewhere. You were the integration.
MCP takes you out of that position. The system publishes a list of specific actions, each with defined inputs and outputs, and the AI calls them directly. Premium Addons implements that standard as a server that runs inside your own WordPress installation, so your AI client is talking to your real site rather than to a description of it.
How MCP works
An MCP setup has two sides.
- The server publishes what can be done. Premium Addons runs one inside WordPress and publishes 34 abilities, each a named action with a defined shape.
- The client is your AI application: Claude, Cursor, Codex, VS Code and a dozen others. It connects, reads the list, and calls what it needs.
A server can publish three kinds of thing. Tools are actions the AI can run. Prompts are ready-made instructions you can pull into a conversation. Resources are documents the AI can read. Premium Addons uses the first of those: every ability is exposed as a tool.
The part that surprises most people is how many calls one request becomes. Ask for a pricing table under the hero on your Services page and the agent does not fire off a single “build” command. It finds the page, reads its structure to see where the hero ends, reads the Pricing Table widget’s settings schema so it knows what controls exist, then inserts the widget with those settings filled in. Four calls, each one a discrete action against your site, each one authenticated as you and visible in your client’s log. None of it is code you have to review and paste.
What MCP is not
It is not a chatbot. MCP only defines how actions get called. The thinking stays in your AI client; the server runs what it is asked to run and nothing else.
It is not an AI model. The protocol has no opinion about which model you use, and it does not add intelligence to your site. It is plumbing.
It is not code generation. The agent does not hand you PHP or CSS to install. It calls Elementor’s own APIs through the abilities, so what appears on your page is a normal Elementor page that you can open and edit by hand afterwards.
It is not a Premium Addons invention. MCP is an open standard used far outside WordPress. Premium Addons implements it.
How Premium Addons implements MCP
The plugin builds on the WordPress MCP Adapter and the WordPress Abilities API, so an ability is registered the same way any other WordPress capability is, rather than through something bolted on the side.
There is one server, named premium-addons, reachable over HTTPS at:
https://yoursite.com/wp-json/premium-addons/mcpEvery ability declares four things before it will run: the inputs it accepts, the output it returns, a permission check, and a set of annotations saying whether it only reads, whether it can destroy content, and whether running it twice is safe. Your AI client reads all of that when it connects, which is how it knows to call get-widget-schema before writing widget settings instead of inventing keys and hoping.
Abilities you switch off in the dashboard are filtered out before the server is even assembled, so a disabled ability is not a blocked ability. It is absent from the list your client reads.
The 34 abilities fall into six categories:
| Category | Abilities |
|---|---|
| Discovery (read-only) | 14 |
| Dashboard | 6 |
| Build | 5 |
| Page/Post Management | 4 |
| Cross Domain Copy & Paste | 3 |
| Media | 2 |
Who can do what, and how you cut access
A connected AI client is not an unrestricted administrator on your site. Four things stand in the way.
Authentication. The client connects with a WordPress application password over HTTPS. That password is separate from your login, and revoking it in Users → Profile kills the connection on the next request.
Capability checks. Every ability runs its own permission check on every single call. Dashboard abilities require manage_options. Build abilities check that you can edit the specific post they are about to touch. An agent connected as an Editor reaches exactly what that Editor reaches, no more.
Per-ability control. In Premium Addons → AI Abilities & MCP Config you can switch abilities off one at a time or by whole category. Leave Discovery on and everything else off and the AI can analyze your site without being able to change a pixel of it.
Annotations. Because each ability declares whether it is read-only, destructive, or repeatable, a well-behaved client can warn you before it runs something that removes content.
The Cross Domain Copy & Paste abilities work slightly differently, and it is worth knowing why. When you copy elements between two sites, the exporting site hands out a signed, single-use URL that expires, and the destination site fetches the payload directly from it. The content never travels through your AI client, and that URL is what authorizes the fetch rather than a WordPress login.
MCP terms you will run into
| Term | What it means |
|---|---|
| MCP client | The AI application you connect from, such as Claude, Cursor or Codex. |
| MCP server | The thing that publishes actions. Premium Addons runs one inside your WordPress site. |
| Tool | A single action the AI can call. In Premium Addons, one ability is one tool. |
| Ability | WordPress’s own name for a registered action with defined inputs, outputs and permissions. |
| Endpoint | The URL your client connects to, /wp-json/premium-addons/mcp on your site. |
| Transport | How client and server talk. Premium Addons uses HTTP. |
| Application password | A separate WordPress password created for an app, revocable without changing your login. |
| Annotation | A flag on an ability saying whether it only reads, whether it can destroy content, and whether repeating it is safe. |
Where to go next
To turn the feature on and connect a client, follow the Elementor AI Abilities (MCP Tools) Tutorial. It covers enabling AI Abilities, choosing which ones to expose, creating an application password, and the ready-made configuration for 15 AI clients.
Each ability also has its own page with use cases, example prompts, and its full input and output reference. They are all linked from the tables at the bottom of the tutorial.
Come & Join the Community
Feel free to join our Facebook group and subscribe to our YouTube channel to keep up with our newest features, improvements, and helpful video tutorials.
