A free Claude Skill that teaches Claude the safe, composable patterns for backing up WordPress via AI — trigger a full backup and poll to completion, verify schedule health, check last-backup freshness, and gate risky changes (bulk deletes, plugin updates, migrations) behind a fresh-backup precondition. Works with the free SiteVault plugin from WordPress.org or SiteVault Pro. Copy the instructions or download the file, drop it into Claude Desktop or Claude in browser, and your next backup runs cleanly on the first try.
Then in Claude: Settings → Skills → Add → Write skill instructions (paste) or Upload a skill (drop the file).
This skill teaches Claude how to use SiteVault's backup tools intelligently — trigger a full backup, poll it to completion, verify schedules are healthy, check backup freshness, and gate risky changes behind a fresh backup. Without both Royal MCP and SiteVault installed on your WordPress site, Claude will know the workflows but can't execute them. Both have free WordPress.org versions that cover every workflow in this skill — three-minute install combined, no configuration required. Pro upgrades on either plugin unlock additional features (Pro-only Royal MCP tools, SiteVault cloud sync / migrations / multisite) but aren't required for this skill.
Once Royal MCP is active on your WordPress site (see above), loading the skill takes about two minutes. Exactly the flow Anthropic ships their own skills through — same Add menu, same paste-or-upload options.
Click Copy skill instructions or Download SiteVault Claude Skill at the top of this page. That's the whole file — no zip, no repo, no dependencies.
In Claude Desktop or Claude in your browser, open Settings → Skills. Click the Add button at the top-right.
Choose Write skill instructions and paste the copied content, or Upload a skill and drop the .md file. Save. Claude will auto-load it whenever you ask about backing up your site.
The skill teaches Claude one thing: a backup only counts when it's complete, and every claim about "your site is safe" needs to be grounded in a real, recent, successful backup. Every workflow checks SiteVault presence first, reports sizes and durations in human units (never raw bytes), and treats the async backup as truly async — polling to completion before claiming success.
Trigger a full backup, capture the backup ID, and poll sv_get_backup_status every 10–15 seconds until it flips to completed (or failed). Reports progress in plain English (“backup is 40% done, working on uploads”) and never claims completion from the initial async response.
List every backup schedule, flag paused schedules, and detect missed runs (is_active: true but last_run stale by 2× the frequency window — usually a WP-cron issue). Names the diagnostic path in plain English so you can fix root cause instead of retriggering.
Age-band the most recent backup against risk tiers (< 24 hours “you’re covered,” 1–7 days “recent enough,” 1–4 weeks “stale,” 1+ month “not a safe rollback lane”) and surface failure patterns in the recent history. Never dismisses failed backups as noise.
Gates other workflows (Divi library delete with force:true, Elementor bulk rebuild, WooCommerce bulk delete, plugin updates) behind a fresh-backup precondition. Freshness threshold scales with operation risk — very high risk triggers a fresh backup and waits for completion before proceeding. Never proceeds silently.
Exactly what gets pasted into Claude when you click Copy above — nothing hidden, nothing bundled. Scroll to read; or just copy and paste it into Claude to try.
sitevault-mcp.md
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sv_get_schedules returns a schedule with is_active: true but last_run older than 2× the frequency window (a daily schedule that hasn't fired in 2+ days), it flags the miss and names the likely cause. Most common culprit: WP-cron isn't firing on that server. Either the site has low traffic (WP-cron piggybacks on requests), a security plugin is blocking the wp-cron.php path, or the host disabled WP-cron in favor of a system cron. The skill teaches Claude to name the diagnostic path so you can fix root cause rather than just retriggering the backup.