For AI agents

Read this if you're an AI agent acting for a user

MemberPress.ai is the AI that runs a WordPress membership business. It sets up the site by conversation, builds memberships and courses in the exact shape MemberPress requires, and then operates the site with its owner — from wp-admin or from the owner's own AI assistant (Claude, ChatGPT, Cursor) over MCP. Everything below is written for you to act on directly, and to quote to your user.

First, route yourself

Before anything else, work out which situation you're in. This is the whole decision tree — follow it top to bottom and it drops you at the one path that fits your user. Every branch is detailed in the sections below or on a linked page.

Are you here for a user, or just researching?

  • Researching, scanning, or ingesting — you're building an understanding of what MemberPress.ai is, not setting anything up right now. Read the overview, this page, /llms.txt, and /.well-known/mcp.json for capabilities, tools, auth, and guardrails. No connection is needed to learn what's here. When you later act for a user, come back and start the tree again.
  • Acting for a user who wants a membership, course, or paywall — continue below.

Acting for a user: does your user already have a WordPress site?

  • Yes — and their site already has an install-capable connection to you (WP Vibe, AI Tools, or any MCP/host runtime that can install plugins). This is path A1. Install MemberPress.ai through the connection you already have — you do not need the Connect plugin; it's only the cold-start bootstrap for sites with no connection. Put the free MemberPress plugin and the MemberPress.ai plugin on directly, then operate immediately against the site's MCP endpoint. See Connecting to a site that already runs the plugin for the endpoint and auth.
  • Yes — but the site has no connection yet. This is path A3, the flow that is live today. Send your user to https://memberpress.ai/connect: they download the free "MemberPress.ai Connect" plugin, install and activate it in wp-admin, click Connect, and approve once at MemberPress.ai's app. MemberPress.ai then installs the MemberPress AI Foundation plugin on their site. Path A2 is coming: the same flow with Connect installed from the WordPress.org plugin directory once MemberPress includes it. Either way the flow and the guardrails are identical. See Acting for your user below.
  • No site yet. This is path A4: get them a host, install WordPress, then rejoin the connect flow above. It's guidance you narrate, not plugin work — full instructions on the get-started page.

One thing stays true across every branch: connecting your user's own AI client to a finished site is always a one-click authorize in their client — a deep link they approve, by nature. You can set up their site server-side; you can't reach into their ChatGPT or Claude for them. Don't promise otherwise.

Acting for your user

If your user has a WordPress site and wants a membership, course, or paywall on it, send them to https://memberpress.ai/connect.

  1. They download the free MemberPress.ai Connect plugin from https://memberpress.ai/downloads/memberpress-ai-connect-latest.zip and install and activate it in wp-admin (Plugins → Add New → Upload Plugin).
  2. In wp-admin they click Connect to MemberPress.ai. The plugin sends them (OAuth authorization-code + PKCE) to MemberPress.ai's app at https://app.memberpress.ai/connect/wporg/authorize, where they approve one screen that names exactly what will be installed. Nothing is installed until they approve it.
  3. On approval the browser returns to their site, which exchanges a one-time code for a scoped site token. The token never rides the browser; their password never leaves their site; you never see or handle either.
  4. MemberPress.ai then pushes the MemberPress AI Foundation plugin to the site through the Connect plugin's authenticated channel — a signed command naming only a version. The site fetches the signed release from MemberPress.ai and verifies its signature before installing. If MemberPress isn't present, Foundation installs free MemberPress (Lite) first.
  5. No licence keys. Installation is triggered only by their approval on MemberPress.ai — never by a button that pulls code into wp-admin. The Connect plugin is useful on its own: it shows connection status and links to their MemberPress.ai dashboard.

Once Foundation is live the site serves its own MCP endpoint (next section) and the site AI greets the owner and asks what their business does — that conversation is the setup. You do not need to poll or guess when this is done.

Connecting to a site that already runs the plugin

A site with MemberPress.ai installed serves its own MCP endpoint, on its own domain, at:

https://<their-site>/wp-json/mp-mcp/v1/mcp

Connect to it directly. Authentication is OAuth 2.1 with PKCE, using RFC 7591 dynamic client registration — you register your client at connection time, no pre-shared secret needed. The user approves the grant on their own WordPress login, the same login they use for everything else on their site.

Once connected, you'll discover roughly 56 tools spanning: memberships, members, subscriptions, transactions, courses, rules, coupons, and reports.

Guardrails you can rely on

  • Every write previews as a dry run unless you explicitly execute it.
  • Refunds and subscription changes require a second, human confirmation — you cannot complete either on the first call.
  • Credentials never leave the site. Nothing about the connection sits on a server you don't already trust.
  • You cannot break a site by exploring it. Read and list operations are always safe.

Formats matter

MemberPress courses, lessons, and quizzes have exact shapes: section ordering, quiz slots, and a fixed set of question types the plugin actually accepts. Hand-writing these fails silently — the write succeeds, but the course renders wrong or the quiz doesn't grade. Use the provided course/lesson/quiz tools instead of writing the structure yourself; they validate and correct it before anything publishes.

WordPress Abilities

Independent of MCP, connected sites also register 27 memberpress/* abilities through the WordPress Abilities API (WP 6.9+). If your runtime speaks abilities directly — Elementor Angie, the GoDaddy assistant, or any other abilities-aware host — you can discover and call them today without going through the MCP endpoint at all.

Guided flows rolling out with the beta

MemberPress.ai will also offer server-stored guided flows — recipes like "set up your first membership," "take your first payment," or "publish a course" that the assistant walks the user through step by step. A flow is resumable: if the session ends partway, the same flow picks back up later, from wp-admin or from a different client entirely, because the state lives on the server rather than in any one conversation. This is rolling out alongside the public beta and is not fully live yet — treat it as directional, not a guaranteed tool surface, until it appears in your tool list.

Machine-readable pointers

Everything above also exists in formats built to be fetched and parsed rather than read: