WooCommerce MCP: Talk to your store like it’s your AI assistant

MCP calls:

In the future, Abilities might go beyond REST and do even more powerful things. But for now, this gives us a solid, secure foundation.

Open the Terminal and run:

What happens behind the scenes:

MCP landed as a beta in WooCommerce 10.3 with product and order Abilities. The update since then was the MCP Adapter v0.3.0 migration in 10.4, which updated the transport layer. Since then, the MCP surface has been stable through 10.5, 10.6, 10.6.1, and 10.7, which is what we’re building on.

Three pieces work together to make this happen, and they all build on existing WooCommerce security.

• Build custom REST API integrations.
• Handle authentication ourselves.
• Write a bunch of code to parse responses.

Think of MCP as a universal translator between AI tools and our WooCommerce store. Normally, if we want AI to interact with our store, we’d need to:

wp option update woocommerce_feature_mcp_integration_enabled yes

• AI can discover what our store can do.
• AI can perform those actions safely.
• Everything works within our existing permissions.

That’s what MCP enables. Throughout this post, I’ll be using Claude Code as the AI assistant, but MCP works with any compatible client: Cursor, VS Code, or anything else that speaks the MCP protocol. Use whatever works best for you.

When we type “list all products” in Claude Code, here’s what happens step by step:

The building blocks

WordPress Abilities API

MCP calls:

• woocommerce/products-list: list all products
• woocommerce/orders-create: create a new order

Option 1: Head over to WP Admin > WooCommerce > Settings > Advanced > Features and enable WooCommerce MCP.

WordPress MCP Adapter

The local proxy (@automattic/mcp-wordpress-remote) is a small Node.js tool we install once during setup and then forget about. Its job is to translate between the way AI clients communicate (stdio) and the way WordPress works (HTTP).

WooCommerce REST API

claude mcp add woocommerce_mcp

  --env WP_API_URL=https://yourstore.com/wp-json/woocommerce/mcp

  --env CUSTOM_HEADERS='{"X-MCP-API-Key": "YOUR_CONSUMER_KEY:YOUR_CONSUMER_SECRET"}'

  -- npx -y @automattic/mcp-wordpress-remote@latest

MCP is still in developer preview, so the built-in Abilities are limited to product and order CRUD (create, read, update, delete). But the foundation is solid, and that’s where Custom Abilities come in.

The flow of communication

This is part one of a three-part series on WooCommerce MCP. This post covers what MCP is, how it works, and how to get started with the built-in Abilities. Part two covers building your first Custom Abilities. Part three goes deeper with advanced demos and production considerations.

The current MCP Abilities bridge to existing REST API endpoints. This means the existing REST API permissions still control everything, and the security stays exactly the same.

Picture this: we’re chatting with an AI assistant, and we say something like “Show me my low-stock products” or “Create a product called Winter Hoodie for .99.” Our WooCommerce store responds, does the work, and gives back the results. No clicking through the WordPress Dashboard, no manual REST API calls. Just natural conversation turning into real store actions.

For local development with HTTP: For testing locally without HTTPS, add this filter:

Say: “Update the Demo Hoodie price to .99.”

Kamlesh Vidhani

Try: “Create an order for product ID 56 with quantity 2.”

• woocommerce/products-list
• products-get
• products-create
• products-update
• products-delete

The Abilities API shipped in WordPress 6.9 as a core feature. It provides a standardized registry that any plugin can hook into, so WooCommerce no longer needs to bundle it separately. For those building Custom Abilities, they’re registered on the wp_abilities_api_init hook (more on this in the part two of the series).

• woocommerce/orders-list
• orders-get
• orders-create
• orders-update

Option 2: Enable via WP-CLI

Prerequisites

• A staging site (WooCommerce MCP is in developer preview)
• WooCommerce 10.7 (or 10.3+)
• WordPress 6.9+ (for the core Abilities API)
• Node.js 22+ (required by the latest mcp-wordpress-remote)
• REST API key with read_write permissions
• An MCP client (I’ll use Claude Code). Note: Claude Code requires a Claude Pro or Max plan ($20/mo+) or Anthropic API credits. It’s not available on the free tier.

Enabling MCP

Ask AI client: “List all products in the store.”

The WordPress Abilities API is a way for WordPress plugins to register “Abilities”, basically things they can do. Think of it like a menu: WooCommerce tells WordPress, “Here’s everything I can do”, and AI assistants can read that menu and pick what they need. Each ability has a name like:

I’ve been deep diving into something really exciting in WooCommerce: the Model Context Protocol integration (MCP). MCP first shipped as a beta in 10.3 and has been maturing across releases. Now, with WooCommerce 10.7 and WordPress 6.9+, the stack is solid enough to build some seriously useful things on top of it. So, I went ahead and did exactly that.

Setting up the connection

Create an API key

• In your store’s WP Admin dashboard, go to WooCommerce > Settings > Advanced > REST API.
• Click Add Key.
• Set permissions to Read/Write.
• Save the consumer key and secret.

Configure Claude Code

MCP calls:

add_filter( 'woocommerce_mcp_allow_insecure_transport', '__return_true' );

The MCP Adapter is the translator. It takes MCP messages from AI assistants and converts them into something WordPress understands. Think of it as the middleman that speaks both “AI protocol” and “WordPress.”

Kamlesh is a Happiness Engineer at WooCommerce. He loves helping customers get the most out of WordPress and WooCommerce — the more he sees what’s possible for them, the more excited he gets. Outside of Woo, you’ll find him exploring new tech or a gadget, traveling with no fixed plans, or watching cricket with unreasonable intensity.

List all products

Products:

In part two, we’ll go beyond the built-ins and build Custom Abilities from scratch — including a Today’s Sales Analytics dashboard, a Low Stock Alert, and a Customer Lookup tool. See you there!

• MCP calls the ability: woocommerce/products-list
• Returns product data with names, prices, stock status, etc.

Create a product

AI Client (Claude, etc.)

    ↓ (MCP protocol over stdio/JSON-RPC)

Local MCP Proxy (mcp-wordpress-remote)

    ↓ (HTTP/HTTPS requests with authentication)

Remote WordPress MCP Server (mcp-adapter)

    ↓ (WordPress Abilities API)

WooCommerce Abilities

    ↓ (REST API calls or direct operations)

WooCommerce Core

Orders:

• Ability: woocommerce/products-create
• Result: A new product appears in the store!

Update a product

Orders:

• Ability: woocommerce/products-update
• The price changes instantly!

Create an order

Orders:

• Ability: woocommerce/orders-create
• A new order is created!

Out of the box, WooCommerce ships with nine MCP Abilities:

So when we say, “List all products under USD,” MCP translates that into something WooCommerce understands, runs it securely, and brings back the results.