Pro Tool Returned Upgrade Prompt with Valid License

What's actually happening under the hood

Every Pro tool call passes through a license gate in Tool_Registry. The gate calls a helper function — wpgenius_is_licensed('royal-mcp-pro') — and if it returns false, the upgrade pitch is what the LLM client receives instead of the actual tool result.

That function comes from the WPGenius licensing SDK bundled with every Royal Plugin Pro (Royal MCP Pro, SiteVault Pro, ForgeCache, GuardPress Pro, SEObolt Pro, FormForge Pro, Royal Affiliate Pro). All of them ship their own copy of the SDK.

Each copy is guarded with:

if ( ! function_exists( 'wpgenius_is_licensed' ) ) {
    function wpgenius_is_licensed( $plugin_slug ) {
        // …
    }
}

Whichever Royal Plugin loads FIRST wins — its copy of the function is defined and every sibling's function_exists guard sees the existing function and skips its own definition. If the winning copy is an older version that doesn't know about the Royal MCP Pro slug yet, the license check returns false even though Royal MCP Pro itself has a perfectly valid license activated.

Diagnosis in 3 steps

Fixing it

Preferred: update the sibling Pro to its latest version

Whenever a Royal Plugin Pro ships a new release, our build pipeline auto-syncs the canonical SDK into it. Updating any sibling Pro to its latest release means it starts winning the load-order race with a current SDK that DOES know about the Royal MCP Pro slug.

1. Go to Dashboard → Updates in wp-admin
2. Update every sibling Royal Pro to its latest version
3. Re-try the Pro tool call from your MCP client

This is the correct long-term fix. Every Royal Pro release ships with the current SDK, so keeping siblings up to date is what prevents the shadow from recurring.

Immediate workaround: temporarily deactivate the shadowing sibling

If updating the sibling isn't an option right now (custom compatibility work in progress, waiting for a maintenance window, etc.):

1. Deactivate the sibling Royal Pro on Plugins
2. Re-try the Pro tool call from your MCP client — it should now succeed
3. Reactivate the sibling when it's safe to update it to the current version

Only the sibling that's actually shadowing needs to be deactivated. If Royal MCP Pro is loading between (say) ForgeCache and SEObolt Pro, deactivating SEObolt Pro won't help — SEObolt loads AFTER Royal MCP Pro, so it isn't the shadow source.

Other possible causes

If Royal MCP Pro is the only Royal Pro on the site or you've already updated / deactivated the sibling and the prompt still fires:

Cause A: Object cache holding a stale "invalid" transient

The SDK caches "license valid" state in a transient for 24 hours. On a site with persistent object cache (Redis, Memcached, some managed hosts), an "invalid" state cached from before you activated can linger.

Fix: Deactivate + reactivate the license on the License page. That deletes the transient and forces a fresh server call.

Cause B: wpgenius_is_licensed function was never defined at all

Rare, but happens if the WPGenius SDK bootstrap file failed to load (PHP syntax error in the SDK, opcache serving stale bytecode, plugin corruption during upload). Every Royal Pro tool call falls back to return false because function_exists is false.

Fix: reinstall Royal MCP Pro fresh (delete + reupload zip), then reactivate the license. If that doesn't help, another sibling Pro might be the one with the broken SDK bootstrap — try deactivating siblings one at a time.

Cause C: RMCP_PRO_LICENSE_BYPASS constant not defined on a dev site

If you're doing local development and don't want to burn an activation slot, define this in wp-config.php:

define( 'RMCP_PRO_LICENSE_BYPASS', true );

The gate short-circuits to "licensed" without any server call. Use only on non-production sites. Not a fix for production issues.

Still Stuck? Two-Step Support Path

If you've verified the license is active, updated / deactivated every sibling Royal Pro, and the Pro tool still returns the upgrade prompt, contact us.

Step 1: Start with the Royal MCP Troubleshooting Guide

Royal MCP Troubleshooting — Start Here covers MCP-layer issues (connection, discovery, auth) — rules out the case where the tool call isn't even reaching Royal MCP Pro in the first place.

Step 2: Email priority support

If MCP-layer diagnostics look clean and the tool is definitely being invoked but always returns the pitch, email priority support from your purchase email address at support@royalplugins.com. Priority email support is included with your license — typical response within 24 hours. Never include your license key in email; we look it up from your purchase address.