Using AI to Manage Your Emails (MCP)

Super Speedy Emails can be driven by an AI assistant. Connect a tool like Claude, ChatGPT, or Cursor to your site and then simply ask it to do things — “show me my lists”, “draft a product-update email for everyone who owns Plugin X but hasn’t gone lifetime, then preview it”, “send a test to me”. This article explains what the assistant can do, how to switch it on, and how to keep it safe. It is aimed at site admins; a short developer note is at the end.

It works over the Model Context Protocol (MCP) — an open standard that lets AI clients call well-defined, permission-checked “tools” on your site. You don’t install any AI into WordPress; you point an AI client you already use at your site, and Super Speedy Emails exposes a safe set of tools to it. (This is the same approach WordPress.com uses for its own AI content management.)

What the assistant can do

Super Speedy Emails exposes 15 tools, grouped into three safety tiers. Reading is always allowed for a connected admin; writing creates drafts; sending is gated.

Tier	Tools	What it does
Read	list audiences, find subscribers, preview an audience, list campaigns, list support emails, list templates, get stats	See everything that’s set up — lists, subscribers/customers, audience counts, campaigns with open/click stats, support emails, templates.
Author (drafts only)	draft a marketing email, update a draft, preview a marketing email, draft a support email, edit a template	Write and revise emails. Nothing is ever sent by these — they create drafts a human reviews.
Send (gated)	send a test, publish a marketing email, run a support email	Actually deliver. Publishing/running requires an explicit confirmation and respects a recipient limit.

Deliberately not exposed to AI: deleting subscribers or lists, editing suppressions, or raw sending. Those stay in the admin UI.

Requirements

• WordPress 6.9 or newer (this is where WordPress added the Abilities API that the feature is built on). On older WordPress the AI feature simply stays off — nothing else changes.
• Super Speedy Emails 1.09+.
• The free WordPress MCP Adapter plugin installed and activated (this is what publishes the tools to AI clients). Super Speedy Emails detects it automatically and registers its tools — you don’t configure anything in SSE.
• An AI client that supports MCP over HTTP (Claude Desktop, Claude Code, ChatGPT, Cursor, and others).

One-time setup

1. Install the MCP Adapter

Install and activate the WordPress MCP Adapter plugin. Once it’s active, Super Speedy Emails automatically exposes its tools at your site’s MCP address (below) — no settings to change on the SSE side.

2. Choose the user the AI acts as

The assistant acts as a real WordPress user, and every tool checks that user’s permissions. You have two good options:

• Use your own admin account — simplest; the AI can do anything you can.
• Create a dedicated user (recommended) — so the AI’s actions are attributable and you can revoke its access instantly. Give it the new “Email Manager” role (see Permissions below) if you want it to manage emails without full site-admin rights.

If you want the AI to author full custom HTML emails, the user also needs the unfiltered_html capability (administrators have it by default).

3. Create an Application Password

This is the credential the AI client uses to log in — it is not your normal WordPress password, and can be revoked any time without affecting your login.

1. Go to Users → Profile (for the chosen user) → Application Passwords.
2. Add a new one named e.g. “AI assistant” and copy the generated password.

Notes:

• Production sites must be served over HTTPS for Application Passwords to work (this is a WordPress security requirement, not an SSE one).
• On a local/dev site over plain HTTP, add define( 'WP_ENVIRONMENT_TYPE', 'local' ); to wp-config.php — that’s what lets WordPress issue Application Passwords without HTTPS.

4. Find your MCP address

• With pretty permalinks on: https://YOURSITE/wp-json/mcp/super-speedy-emails
• With plain permalinks: https://YOURSITE/index.php?rest_route=/mcp/super-speedy-emails

Connect your AI client

Claude Code (command line):

claude mcp add --transport http super-speedy-emails "https://YOURSITE/wp-json/mcp/super-speedy-emails" --header "Authorization: Basic $(printf 'USERNAME:APP_PASSWORD' | base64)"

Run claude mcp list — it should show ✔ Connected. Now just chat: “Draft a newsletter to my main list announcing the 2.0 release and show me a preview.”

Claude Desktop, ChatGPT, Cursor, other clients: open the client’s “add MCP server” / “connectors” screen, choose the HTTP transport, paste the MCP address, and add a header Authorization: Basic <base64 of username:app_password>. (Most clients have a field for custom headers; the base64 value is username:app_password encoded.)

Example things to ask

• “How many subscribers do I have, and how many opened my last campaign?”
• “Find the subscriber with email jane@example.com and show which lists she’s on.”
• “How many people own Plugin X but are not on a lifetime licence? Show me a sample.”
• “Draft a product-update email to those people, keep it under 150 words, then preview it.”
• “Send a test of that email to me.”
• “Publish it.” → the assistant will ask you to confirm before anything goes out.

Permissions — email access without full admin

Super Speedy Emails adds two capabilities so you can grant email access without handing over the whole site:

Capability	Grants
sse_manage_emails	Reach the Emails admin screens and use the read + author tools.
sse_send_emails	Actually send / publish.

• Administrators automatically have both — nothing changes for you.
• A new “Email Manager” role has both capabilities but not full site admin — ideal for a marketing teammate or a dedicated AI user.
• Want an assistant that can draft but never send? Give its user sse_manage_emails only (not sse_send_emails). It’ll be able to write and preview, but every send tool will be refused.

These capabilities apply to both the AI tools and the WordPress admin screens, so the boundary is consistent whether a person or an AI is acting.

Staying safe

The whole point is that an assistant can email real people, so there are several guardrails — all on by default:

• Drafts by default. The authoring tools only ever create drafts. The AI proposes; a human (or an explicit, confirmed publish) disposes.
• Explicit confirmation to send. Publishing a campaign or running a support email requires the AI to pass an explicit “confirm” — a send is never an accidental one-liner.
• Recipient limit. A publish to more than 500 recipients is blocked unless explicitly overridden, so a large send always gets a human’s eye. (Site owners can change this limit — see the developer note.)
• Test mode is respected. Set Super Speedy Emails to Log only while you get comfortable — the AI can “send” and nothing reaches a real inbox. See the Test Modes KB article.
• Unsubscribes are always honoured. Every send runs through the same suppression checks as the rest of the plugin, so opt-outs and bounces are respected no matter what the AI does.
• Revocable, attributable access. Use a dedicated user; delete its Application Password to cut access instantly, and its actions are logged against it.

Troubleshooting

Symptom	Likely cause / fix
Client shows “not connected” or 404	The MCP Adapter plugin isn’t active, or the URL is wrong. Check the address form (pretty vs ?rest_route=) matches your permalink settings.
401 / “not allowed”	The Application Password is wrong, or app passwords are disabled. On a non-HTTPS local site, set WP_ENVIRONMENT_TYPE to local (see setup step 3).
AI can read but can’t send	The acting user lacks sse_send_emails. Give it that capability or the “Email Manager” role.
A publish is refused as “too many recipients”	The audience is over the 500 recipient limit. Have a human review, then ask the AI to publish with the ceiling override.
Sends “succeed” but nobody receives them	Super Speedy Emails is in Log only (or Redirect) test mode. Switch to Live when you’re ready.

Is there a chat box inside WordPress itself?

Not yet — and that’s deliberate. WordPress core doesn’t ship an in-admin AI chat, and the cleanest, most secure way to “chat with your emails” today is to connect an AI client you already trust (Claude, ChatGPT, Cursor) as described above. A native in-plugin chat may come later as WordPress’s AI building blocks mature.

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Developer note

• Under the hood: Super Speedy Emails registers WordPress Abilities under the super-speedy-emails category (in includes/class-sse-mcp.php) and, when the MCP Adapter is active, a dedicated MCP server at wp-json/mcp/super-speedy-emails exposing them as tools. The tools wrap the plugin’s existing service classes (SSE_Campaigns, SSE_Subscribers, SSE_Segment, …) — no separate API to maintain.
• Abilities are also reachable via core REST at wp-json/wp-abilities/v1/abilities/<name>/run (read tools are GET, write/send are POST), so you can script them without an MCP client.
• Capabilities live in includes/class-sse-capabilities.php: sse_manage_emails and sse_send_emails, implicitly granted to any manage_options user via a user_has_cap filter, plus the sse_email_manager role.
• Tune the recipient limit with the sse_mcp_recipient_ceiling filter (default 500):

add_filter( 'sse_mcp_recipient_ceiling', function () { return 2000; } );

• The audience predicate language the AI generates for targeting is documented in Product Audiences & Segments and in class-sse-segment.php.

See also: Test Modes, Product Audiences & Segments, Email Categories, Unsubscribes & Suppressions, and the Developer Reference.