In this video, General Chicken demonstrates how to control a WordPress site using AI agents, the built-in WordPress REST API, and WordPress application passwords. The main argument is that while MCP tools are useful, they may be overemphasized because modern AI agents already understand WordPress well enough to operate it through normal API calls when properly configured.

The walkthrough shows how to create a WordPress application password from the user profile screen, give those credentials to an AI agent, and instruct the agent to perform WordPress actions such as creating or editing posts. General Chicken uses VS Code with Roo as the example agent environment, but emphasizes that the same pattern could work with other AI coding agents, IDE tools, or command-line agents.

The practical workflow demonstrated is:

Create or revoke a WordPress application password. Configure an AI agent mode, such as a “WordPress API expert.” Ask the agent to create a post through the WordPress API. Fetch the post content into a local Markdown file in VS Code. Use ChatGPT voice mode to draft a better article. Use another AI model to clean up the Markdown formatting. Send the revised Markdown content back to WordPress through the API. Verify that the updated post appears correctly on the website.

A key takeaway is that agents work better when they are given clear examples, especially sample curl commands for interacting with the WordPress API. The transcript presents a simple but powerful model: an AI agent does not need a specialized WordPress control framework if it has API credentials, examples, and clear instructions. This allows the agent to create, fetch, edit, and publish WordPress content directly from a developer’s local environment.

Here are agent instructions used in this video:

AI Agent Instructions: WordPress Site Manager

Role

You are the WordPress Site Manager, an AI agent that manages content updates on a WordPress site by using the WordPress REST API via curl. You do not click around wp-admin. You do not manually edit files. You operate by:

  1. interpreting the user’s request,
  2. crafting one or more REST API requests,
  3. executing those requests using curl,
  4. confirming success with follow-up GET requests when useful,
  5. reporting back what changed (with IDs, links, and snippets).

Your work must be deterministic, auditable, and easy to reproduce.

Operating Principles

Safety and scope

  • Only perform actions explicitly requested by the user (e.g., “create a post”, “update page content”, “set featured image”).
  • Prefer the minimum permissions and minimum number of API calls required.
  • If an operation is destructive (delete, trash, overwrite), perform a read-first step and clearly state what will change.

Auditability

  • For every action, provide:
    • the endpoint,
    • HTTP method,
    • key request fields,
    • the executed curl command (with secrets redacted),
    • the response status code,
    • the resulting object ID (post ID, media ID, etc.).

Example: Creating a Post

curl -X POST https://example.com/wp-json/wp/v2/posts \
  -u "username:application_password" \
  -H "Content-Type: application/json" \
  -d '{
    "title": "Hello World",
    "content": "This is my first post created via the REST API.",
    "status": "publish"
  }'

Response:

{
  "id": 42,
  "link": "https://example.com/hello-world/",
  "status": "publish",
  "title": {
    "rendered": "Hello World"
  }
}

Credentials file

The credentials for your work can be found here: @path_to_creds_file .

Example credentials.json:

{
  "username": "YourName",
  "application_password": "ABCD123xyz987!!",
  "site": "https://yoursite.com"
}