How to Connect Your AI Agent to Elevated Site Search

To connect an AI agent to Elevated Site Search, go to Elevated › Site Search › AI Agent, click Install & Activate Agent Connector, then click Open Agent Connector and follow the connection wizard: pick your agent, generate an application password, and paste the setup command into your agent. Once connected, your agent can search your site the way visitors do, change every setting including themes and styling, and manage the search index. Every operation is validated and permission-checked.

Step 1: Open the AI Agent Page
Step 2: Install and Activate Agent Connector
Step 3: Choose Your Agent
Step 4: Generate the Application Password and Connect
Step 5: Test the Connection
How Agent Access Works
Troubleshooting

Step 1: Open the AI Agent Page

Navigate to Elevated › Site Search in your WordPress admin.

Click AI Agent in the plugin’s top navigation, next to Settings.

The AI Agent page in Elevated Site Search showing the Install and Activate Agent Connector button

Step 2: Install and Activate Agent Connector

Agent Connector for WP is the free plugin that exposes Elevated Site Search’s abilities to your agent over MCP. The AI Agent page installs it for you.

Click Install & Activate Agent Connector.

Elevated Site Search downloads a pinned Agent Connector release and verifies its checksum before installing anything. When it finishes, the page shows Agent Connector is active and ready to create a secure connection.

The AI Agent page showing Agent Connector active and the Allow AI agent access toggle

Leave Allow AI agent access switched on. This is the master switch for agent access to Site Search. Turn it off at any time to cut agents off without disconnecting anything else.

Step 3: Choose Your Agent

Click Open Agent Connector. The Agent Connector screen opens.

The Agent Connector Connect screen with the Get started button

Click Get started.

Select the agent you use. Agent Connector shows exact setup instructions for each one; pick Other for universal instructions that work with any MCP-capable agent.

The agent picker showing Codex CLI, Codex Desktop, Claude Code CLI, Claude Desktop, and Other

Click Continue.

Step 4: Generate the Application Password and Connect

Your agent authenticates with a WordPress application password, a credential scoped to your account that you can revoke at any time. The agent connects through a local proxy, so the computer running your agent needs Node.js.

The Connect Claude Code CLI screen with the Generate App Password button

Click Generate App Password. If you already created one, click I already have one instead.

The password is shown once. Copy it, or save it to your password manager.

Follow the setup instructions shown for your agent: copy the command, open your terminal, and paste it. Your agent confirms the MCP server was added.

On Mac, the terminal app is called Terminal. On Windows, search for how to open your terminal. The steps are the same after that.

Step 5: Test the Connection

Open your agent and ask:

Prompt

Are you connected to my WordPress site over MCP? List the Elevated Site Search tools you can use.

The agent should confirm the connection and list the Site Search tools: site search, settings, index management, search analytics, and health checks.

Then try a real request:

Prompt

Set Site Search fuzzy matching to normal and rebuild the index.

The agent updates the setting and starts the rebuild; rebuilding the index requires it to confirm the action explicitly.

How Agent Access Works

Elevated Site Search registers its operations as WordPress abilities: the same validated, permission-checked operations the admin interface uses. Agent Connector serves those abilities to your agent over MCP, an open protocol supported by Claude, Codex, Cursor, and most other agents.

The guardrails, in plain terms:

Administrator-level auth. The application password acts with your account’s permissions. Treat it like a password: it is shown once, and you can revoke it at any time under Users › Profile › Application Passwords.
Destructive operations require confirmation. Rebuilding the index, cancelling a rebuild, resetting settings, and clearing the popular searches list all carry a required confirm flag. A request without it fails validation before anything runs.
One operation at a time. Settings and index operations are serialized. While one runs, a second attempt is refused with “Another settings or index operation is already in progress.”
The master switch is yours. The Allow AI agent access toggle on the AI Agent page cuts off all Site Search abilities without touching the connection itself, and agents can never flip it themselves.
Licensing stays human. Agents have no access to license activation or deactivation.

Troubleshooting

The AI Agent page says WordPress abilities are unavailable. Your WordPress version doesn’t include the Abilities API yet. Update WordPress, then reload the page.

The AI Agent page says Agent Connector is inactive. The connector is installed but switched off. Click Activate Agent Connector.

The setup command fails in the terminal. The connection runs through a local proxy that requires Node.js. Install Node.js from nodejs.org, then run the command again.

The agent connects but has no Site Search tools. Check that Allow AI agent access is switched on on the AI Agent page, then ask the agent to reconnect or refresh its tool list.

You want to cut off access. Switch off Allow AI agent access to block Site Search abilities, or revoke the application password under Users › Profile › Application Passwords to sever the connection entirely.

This is the machine-readable version of this article. Feed it to your agent, or point the agent at the raw Markdown.

What this connection is

Elevated Site Search registers 14 WordPress Abilities under the elevated-site-search/* namespace. Agent Connector for WP serves them over MCP (Streamable HTTP) at:

{site_url}/wp-json/mcp/mcp-adapter-default-server

Authentication: WordPress application password (Basic auth), typically via the @automattic/mcp-wordpress-remote stdio proxy with env vars WP_API_URL, WP_API_USERNAME, WP_API_PASSWORD.

Discovery

tools/list on the MCP endpoint returns the exposed tools.
mcp-adapter-discover-abilities lists every registered ability; mcp-adapter-get-ability-info returns an ability's full input/output JSON Schema; mcp-adapter-execute-ability executes one.

The ability surface (summary)

Search: search-site (the same index, scope, and fuzzy matching visitors get)
Settings: get-settings, update-settings (partial patch of the 169-key settings object), reset-settings (requires confirm: true)
Index: get-index-status, rebuild-index (requires confirm: true; optional engine), cancel-rebuild (requires rebuild_id + confirm: true), get-rebuild-progress
Scope lookups: list-indexable-post-types, list-searchable-custom-fields, find-filter-terms
Analytics: get-popular-searches, clear-popular-searches (requires confirm: true)
Diagnostics: get-health

The exact schema of every ability and captured request/response examples: https://elevatedextensions.com/documentation/site-search/managing-with-ai-agent/?format=agent

Contract rules that will bite you if ignored

Four abilities require confirm: true: reset-settings, rebuild-index, cancel-rebuild (which also requires the running rebuild_id), and clear-popular-searches. The flag is schema-required, so an unconfirmed call fails validation before any handler runs: Ability "elevated-site-search/rebuild-index" has invalid input. Reason: confirm is a required property of input.
Settings and index operations are serialized behind a mutex. A concurrent attempt fails with Another settings or index operation is already in progress. Wait for get-rebuild-progress to report a terminal status before the next mutation.
update-settings takes a partial patch under settings and responds with { settings, index_rebuilding, rebuild_mode }. Changing scope settings (indexed post types, custom fields, taxonomies, comments) triggers an index rebuild automatically. Note: update-settings is annotated destructive but takes no confirm key; sending one fails the closed schema.
search-site results are lean by design: thumbnail is always null, url is the plain /?p=N form, and categories is empty. The storefront UI resolves richer data separately; use the id when you need precision. Agent searches are NOT recorded in search analytics, so you can search freely without polluting the popular searches list.
Licensing, connector installation, and the access toggle are human-only. They are not abilities. When the site owner switches Allow AI agent access off (option elevated_site_search_agent_access), the abilities are not registered and calls fail with a 404, code rest_ability_not_found, message Ability not found. Ask the human to switch it on; agents cannot.

Minimal worked example

// search-site (input)
{ "query": "denim care", "limit": 5 }

Response shape:

{
  "success": true,
  "data": {
    "results": [
      { "id": 9150, "title": "<mark>Denim</mark> <mark>Care</mark> 101: How to Wash Jeans Without Fading", "excerpt": "Raw and dark-wash <mark>denim</mark> fades because...", "url": "/?p=9150", "type": "post", "typeLabel": "Post", "thumbnail": null, "date": "2026-08-25 23:02:41", "categories": [] }
    ]
  }
}

To rebuild the index:

// rebuild-index (input)
{ "confirm": true }

Poll get-rebuild-progress until status is "complete" ({ status, posts_done, total_posts, message, rebuild_id, target_engine }), then verify with get-health ({ status, engine, index_exists, document_count }).

On this page