This site is a playground. Its whole reason to exist is to poke at what today’s AI tools can actually do — and to share what works, what breaks, and what I learn in the process.
The rule I set for myself
Everything about this site — content, design, configuration, plumbing — gets built through Claude Code. I do not click through wp-admin to set it up. I do not tweak the customizer by hand. If the AI can drive it, the AI drives it. I am only here to review, approve, and occasionally push back.
It is an extreme constraint on purpose. Constraints are how you find the edges.
How it works
Two channels into WordPress, picked in order of preference:
- The WordPress REST API, authenticated with an Application Password. Claude can create pages, manage menus, update settings, post drafts, and reshape the information architecture in one shot. No UI needed.
- Claude in Chrome (MCP), for the things the REST API cannot touch. On a classic theme like Astra, the customizer settings — colors, typography, Additional CSS — live in
theme_mods, which are not exposed to REST. When Claude hit that wall, it suggested I handle the rest manually. Instead, I asked it to drive my logged-in Chrome. It took over, navigatedcustomize.php, and pasted a 16 KB CSS block via the page’s own JavaScript API. Same result, still zero manual clicking.
The moment I liked most: Claude hit the limit, paused, handed me a clean handoff document with exact steps, and said “you do this in the admin.” That was the correct answer. But because I had the Chrome MCP available, I could give it back a better answer: “no, you do it.” And it did.
Why this is worth doing
- Reproducibility. The site is scripts and prompts. I can throw away the DB, rebuild from zero, and end up with the same site.
- Speed. Setting up pages, categories, menus, front-page config, initial CSS, and a draft post took under an hour end to end.
- Learning. Every time the model hits a wall, I learn something real about the seam between REST APIs, plugins, and theme customizers. That becomes posts.
- Honesty. I would rather write “here is what actually works” than “here is the demo reel.” Doing the real work surfaces the rough edges.
The stack, briefly
- Host: Spacestar.net — my ISP and hosting provider for this site.
- WordPress with Application Passwords enabled.
- Astra theme (light, fast, ad- and affiliate-friendly).
- Claude Code for orchestration.
- Claude in Chrome (MCP) for anything the REST API cannot reach.
- MCP Adapter plugin installed server-side — kept available for deeper, MCP-native integration in future experiments.
Try this yourself
If you have a WordPress site and you want to see how far you can get without ever opening wp-admin, I wrote a full walkthrough: How to let Claude Code build your WordPress site. It covers Application Passwords, the REST API, sample prompts from this exact build, and the Chrome MCP escape hatch for when the API can’t do the job.
What to expect here
- Honest reviews of AI tools I am actually using in production-ish work.
- Guides that err on the side of “copy-paste this and it works,” not “theory first.”
- Field notes from building this site, and others, under the “let the AI drive” constraint.
Welcome in. Pull up a chair. Let’s see how far this goes.
— Ben