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SpiritMCP — AI Nervous System for an Agency
Overview
Internal Project · Development
Building SpiritMCP
An AI nervous system for our agency.
The first plugin and server pair that lets Claude — and every modern AI assistant — manage WordPress sites, hosting, and infrastructure with editorial care and surgical safety. Built in spare hours alongside a surgical career.
Spirit
MCP
The starting point
A surgeon, a side project, and a stack of broken bridges.
Every WordPress site we manage has dozens of moving parts. Every tool we tried connecting kept tripping over the seams. So we built our own.
Before
The friction tax
Standard automation tools strip # from colours. Hundreds of meta fields need quoting that breaks on every special character. Builder-specific data gets silently dropped by REST. Cache plugins return 404s when purged programmatically.
Every "easy" task became a thirty-minute fight with the wrong layer of the stack.
After
Speak in JSON, write in PHP
SpiritMCP exposes every WordPress task as a clean, schema-typed tool Claude can call. The plugin runs operations in WordPress's own native PHP — the same ones the block editor uses — so what you ask for is what you get.
Special characters survive. Builder fields actually save. Cache actually clears. 47/47 tests passing on first deploy.
Diagram 01 · System architecture
Two front doors. One careful system.
Claude connects to whichever side it needs. The server handles everything outside WordPress; the plugin handles everything inside. They speak through a single bridge when they need to coordinate.
Claude Desktop / Code
MCP client
SSE
JSON-RPC 2.0
SpiritMCP server
Fastify · TypeScript · MCP SDK
SpiritWP MCP plugin
PHP 8.2 · WordPress native
VPS · SSH · FILES · CC
Run servers, manage Claude Code
screenshots, bridge, audit
+ wp.cli, wp.exec_sql fallbacks
20 WP TOOL CATEGORIES
content · meta · cache · builder
SEO · forms · taxonomies · users
all gated by feature flags
wp.plugin_call passthrough
SSH + curl localhost · no auth · no firewalls
"The breakthrough wasn't building one big tool. It was realising the system needed two — and that the smartest part would be the bridge between them."
— design note · April 2026
Diagram 02 · The wp.plugin_call flow
Seven steps. Zero compromise.
What happens when Claude asks the server to do something inside WordPress. Confirm-token retries are automatic. Multi-tenant hosts work because the Host header is resolved per call.
1 · Claude calls wp.plugin_call
route: /spiritwp-mcp/v1/meta/post/264
2 · Resolve site domain via SSH
ssh vps "wp option get home" → spiritwp.com
3 · Build curl command
curl -X PUT -H "Host: spiritwp.com" -d '{...}' http://127.0.0.1/...
4 · Execute over SSH
No HTTPS, no auth headers, no firewall rules
5 · Plugin receives (Mode A)
Network guard passes (127.0.0.1) → controller runs
6 · Confirm-token auto-retry
If CONFIRM_REQUIRED → extract token
→ re-curl with confirm_token in body
retry
7 · Response envelope mapped
{ok:true, data:{...}} → MCP ToolResult
Claude receives structured data
Build timeline
From audit to live in one evening.
A condensed log of how the project came together — the moments where it clicked, broke, and clicked again.
19:00 · Audit
Reviewing the original scaffold
Seven divergences from locked specifications. Decision: scrap and restart with a clean two-part architecture.
19:30 · Architecture
Two front doors, one shared core
Mode A for SpiritMCP server. Mode B for Claude Desktop. Same controllers, two dispatchers. Feature flags as outer gate; confirm tokens as inner gate.
20:00 · Build
Forty-two files, twenty controllers
Bootstrap to twenty REST controllers, MCP layer with rich JSON Schemas, admin settings, audit log, JWT auth, network guard, rate limiter, license stub.
21:30 · Test
Forty-seven tests, all passing
Every endpoint on a live production site. Special characters survived. Three minor bugs found and patched in v0.1.1.
22:30 · Integrate
SpiritMCP server learns the plugin
The server gained wp.plugin_call, wp.plugin_info, and automatic confirm-token retry.
23:00 · Ship
Live on GitHub. Live on production.
Code pushed to github.com/meditatingsurgeon/spiritwp-mcp · server deployed via Coolify · plugin installed · audit log accumulating.
Built with
Technology stack
PHP 8.2+
Plugin core
WordPress
Native APIs
TypeScript
MCP server
Fastify
HTTP layer
MCP SDK
Protocol
JSON-RPC 2.0
Transport
SSE
Streaming
JWT (HS256)
Auth
bcrypt
Bridge keys
Coolify
Deploy
Hetzner
Hosting
GitHub
Version control
What we built
Two halves, both production-ready.
SpiritMCP server
- Fastify + MCP SDK over SSE transport
- VPS, SSH, file, and Claude Code remoting
wp.plugin_callproxy with auto-retrywp.plugin_infofor live feature flag visibility- Per-VPS bridge settings in JSON store
- Multi-tenant Host header resolution via SSH
- Audit tail for live debugging
SpiritWP MCP plugin
- 20 tool categories, 56 tools
- Mode A (localhost bridge) + Mode B (public MCP)
- 4 feature flags gating dangerous capabilities
- Confirm-token flow for destructive operations
- JSONL audit log with hash-and-rotate
- Rate limiting (30/min) on Mode B
- SEO adapter (autodetects any major plugin)
47/47
Live tests passing on first deploy
56
Tools across 20 categories
42
Files in plugin source
£4.99
Per month, full feature access
Open-source plugin. Hosted server. Yours from less than a coffee.
SpiritMCP is part of the Automate & Scale pillar — built once, refined publicly, available to every spiritual teacher who wants AI in their stack without losing control of it.
Client Specifications
Technology Stack
Ready to raise your frequency?
Tell us your vision — we will tell you what is possible.