Starting a new site in WordPress Studio just got faster: Blueprint support is now enabled in version 1.6.0. 

With Blueprints, you don’t have to start with an empty WordPress site; simply predefine your preferred setup once and reuse it. If your team relies on a standard scaffold, turn it into a Blueprint and keep every project consistent and efficient.

With Blueprints in Studio, you can create sites from your own custom Blueprint or pick from a curated set of Blueprints to get up and running quickly.

Here’s a brief demo of this new feature in action.

How Blueprints work in Studio

Blueprints are lightweight JSON “recipes” for WordPress sites. Instead of saving a full site copy, they tell Studio which versions, plugins, and settings to apply so you and your team can spin up the same environment anytime.

Other local development tools often rely on full-site snapshots, which can be large, hard to share, and locked to a single environment. Studio Blueprints, by contrast, are portable and declarative: a single JSON file can reproduce the same site setup on any machine, instantly. That makes them more flexible for teams, easier to keep in sync, and more powerful for testing and iteration.

Creating local sites from Blueprints is now incorporated into the standard new site creation flow within Studio. Studio runs on WordPress Playground, so if you’ve used Playground Blueprints before, you can use the same ones here or use one of our free featured Blueprints.

Once you have Studio installed on your computer, click the “Add site” button in the lower left corner. The following screen will appear.

Select “Start from a Blueprint,” and you will see a gallery of featured Blueprints and an option to choose your own custom Blueprint.

Studio currently includes three featured Blueprints:

• Quick Start: Sets up a local site that mirrors the WordPress.com Business plan so that you can build in a production-like environment
• Development: Optimized for theme and plugin development, with tools like Plugin Check and Create Block Theme preinstalled
• Commerce: Powered by WooCommerce and companion plugins, giving you a store-ready site out of the box

If a featured Blueprint fits your needs, select it and click Continue. To use your own Blueprint, click “Choose Blueprint file,” select the JSON file from your computer, and click Continue.

Next, name your site. You can access more options, such as WordPress and PHP version configuration, by opening “Advanced settings.” When you’re ready, click “Add site.”

Behind the scenes, Studio builds the site from whichever Blueprint you selected or added. This flow should feel familiar to adding a blank site in Studio.

Blueprint-enabled workflows

Blueprints bring speed and consistency to your workflow, whether you’re working solo or with a team.

They help you:

• Streamline repeatable setups: Create Blueprints for common site types (blog, portfolio, store). Start new projects in Studio with the right foundation and get straight to work.
• Keep teams aligned: Add a blueprint.json to your project’s GitHub repository, whether you are building a plugin, theme, or full site. It scaffolds the same environment every time, so teammates can start in minutes. Version control keeps changes reviewable and consistent.
• Simplify demos and testing: Launch Studio with the exact theme, plugins, and sample content you need. Reproduce bugs or confirm fixes with a reliable, repeatable setup.

The featured Blueprints in Studio are delivered through an API, so new ones appear in the app as soon as they’re published. After you’ve had a chance to try them, we’d love to hear how you’re using Blueprints and what additional options you’d find helpful. Share your feedback in the comments or on GitHub.

Ready to create your own? Start with the How to create custom Blueprints guide. If you already use WordPress Playground Blueprints, you can reuse them in Studio — there are just a few differences to keep in mind, which the guide covers.

What’s next for Studio?

Blueprint support and the featured Blueprints in this release are an initial step. We believe Blueprints will be a fundamental part of most Studio workflows, so additional enhancements will follow. We’re also exploring the possibility of a public Blueprint library on WordPress.com where you can create, store, and share your own.

In the meantime, the next focus areas are:  

• Advanced Studio CLI: Create Studio sites, and push or pull site content to and from production and staging, all from the command line. The first pieces have already landed.
• Streamlined site creation: This will make the process of creating live sites on WordPress.com from Studio, and pulling existing sites into Studio, much smoother. 
• Performance improvements: Upcoming enhancements in WordPress Playground will make Studio even faster and more responsive.

We also enabled GitHub Discussions in the Studio repository. It’s a place for open conversation about the future of Studio, tips and tricks, questions, and more. It complements issues and pull requests. You’ll see me and the product team active there, and we hope you’ll join us.

Finally, if you haven’t tried Studio yet, or it’s been a while, now’s a great time to jump in. It’s free, open source, and improving rapidly.

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Whether you manage a single blog or a roster of client sites, it typically involves logging into dashboards, checking posts and comments, reviewing traffic statistics, and monitoring plugin or theme updates. Every question about your site’s health or performance takes time to answer.

Now you can simply ask an AI assistant like Claude, ChatGPT, or Cursor: “Show me my latest posts and how they’re performing.” 

Within seconds, the results appear, pulled via WordPress.com’s new support for the Model Context Protocol (MCP).

Today’s manual back-and-forth

AI assistants are already part of many creative and development workflows, helping people brainstorm copy, generate code, and analyze data. 

But when it’s time to work with your WordPress site, those tools don’t have direct access to your site details. They don’t automatically know which posts went live, how traffic is trending, or what plugins are active, so you still end up copying, pasting, and exporting spreadsheets, adding extra steps every time you want an answer that your AI can’t reach on its own.

That gap means your AI can brainstorm and advise, but it hits a wall when it comes to actually using your site’s data to help you make meaningful decisions. What’s missing is a secure way for your AI assistant to communicate with your WordPress.com site and understand your content, stats, and settings.

The WordPress.com MCP unlock

That’s where MCP (Model Context Protocol) comes in — an open standard that lets applications provide context to large language models (LLMs).

With MCP, your AI assistant can actually connect to WordPress.com, giving you direct visibility into your site’s content, analytics, and settings, all without leaving your AI tool.

The result is:

• Faster workflows: Skip the logins and clicking through individual site stats — just ask your AI assistant.
• AI and WordPress.com together: Bring all of your site content, data, and insights into one place.
• Secure by design: Safe access with nothing stored locally, and full control to connect and disconnect at any time.

As the first WordPress host to support MCP with OAuth by default, WordPress.com has made every site on a paid WordPress.com plan MCP-ready, if and when you’re ready to enable it.

Simply connect your favorite AI app (Claude Desktop, Cursor, VS Code, or any other AI assistant that supports MCP) and start communicating with your WordPress.com site in a brand new way.

Currently, our MCP integration provides your AI assistant with “read-only” access to your site, meaning it can securely surface information and insights in your AI tool without requiring you to log in and manually retrieve them. “Write” access will come next, extending what your assistant can do as well as what it can see.

How to get started with MCP on WordPress.com

Getting started only takes a few minutes. Once enabled on your WordPress.com account, MCP works behind the scenes to connect your WordPress.com sites with your favorite AI assistant:

1. Enable MCP on your WordPress.com account.
2. Configure your AI application following the provided instructions.
3. Authenticate through our OAuth interface.

After that, you can directly ask your AI assistant for information about your sites so you don’t have to dig through reports for basic answers. 

Here are just a few examples of some of the things you may want to learn about your sites through your AI assistant:

• “How did my latest post perform?” No need to click through pages of analytics; you get the traffic insights instantly in your AI assistant.
• “Run a comprehensive health check across all my WordPress.com sites – show me which ones need attention for storage, performance, or content freshness, then create a prioritized action plan.” Your AI assistant can instantly return a prioritized action plan — no manual site-by-site checks required.
• “Summarize recent comments across all my sites.” Address common reader questions and needs by getting a quick overview of the conversations happening across your sites.

These are just a handful of ways MCP makes your WordPress.com site AI-readable. See the complete list of available MCP tools and some prompt examples in our developer documentation.

Try it today

Understanding your site shouldn’t mean piecing together insights from half a dozen places. With MCP, you can now learn more about your website where you’re already working — in your AI assistant.

It’s a faster, more focused way to stay on top of your WordPress.com sites, with the reassurance that the connection is secured by OAuth and fully under your control.

WordPress.com’s MCP implementation is just one of many currently available in Automattic products — and you can even use them together. You can find a complete list of our MCP servers here.

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