Safety and recovery for AI edits
What an AI client can change through Royal MCP, how to keep it to reading or to drafts, what undo covers in Free and Pro, and what happens to your site if you remove the plugin.
At a glance
| Control | Royal MCP (Free) | Royal MCP Pro |
|---|---|---|
| Read-only mode | Yes | Yes |
| New posts and pages start as drafts | Yes | Yes |
| Won’t overwrite a post someone has open in the editor | Yes | Yes |
| List, compare and restore revisions | Yes | Yes |
| Preview links for drafts | Yes | Yes |
| Undo | 72 hours, one change per undo token | Up to 7 days, including bulk changes |
| Activity log of every tool call | Yes | Yes, plus a 90-day audit log |
| Choose which tools a connection may use | In the AI client | Custom Endpoint Profiles |
Read-only mode
Turn on Read-only mode in WP Admin → Royal MCP → Settings. AI clients can still read your site, but every tool that creates, updates or deletes anything is refused, for every client and every user, administrators included.
It’s the right setting for audits, reports and content reviews, and for the first session with a new client while you see how it behaves. wp royal-mcp connection-health shows whether it is on.
Keep AI work in drafts
Posts and pages created through Royal MCP are saved as drafts unless the agent asks for another status. Tell the agent up front: “Save everything as a draft. Don’t publish.”
wp_publish_and_promote creates a post, featured image, categories and SEO fields in one call, and it publishes live unless the agent passes status: "draft". Ask for drafts by name when you use it.
To check a draft before it goes live, ask the agent for a preview link. It returns a link you can open without publishing anything.
Editing a page that is already published changes the live page. To work on a copy instead, ask the agent to clone the page as a draft first (Elementor and Divi pages have dedicated clone tools), or do the work on a staging site.
What undo covers
When a tool changes something that can be reversed, its response includes an undo token. Ask the agent to undo that change and it calls mcp_undo_last_operation with the token.
In Royal MCP (Free)
- Covered: updates to posts and pages, deleting posts, pages and media, post meta, categories, tags and their meta, menus, widgets, site options, theme settings, custom CSS, permalink structure, SEO fields, comments, and every Elementor and Divi write tool.
- How long: each token works once and lasts 72 hours.
- When undo is refused: if someone changed the same item after the AI did, the undo stops instead of overwriting the newer change.
In Royal MCP Pro
Undo lasts up to 7 days, covers bulk changes as one batch, and every write is listed in a 90-day audit log you can review in WP Admin.
What undo doesn’t cover
- New content. A post or page the AI created isn’t undone; delete or trash it.
- Media uploads. Delete the file from the media library.
- Changes older than the token’s lifetime, or made by tools that don’t return an undo token.
For those, use WordPress revisions: the agent can list a post’s revisions, compare two of them and restore one. For anything bigger, restore a backup. Take one before any large AI session.
Limit which tools a client can use
In Royal MCP (Free), read-only mode is all or nothing. For finer control, restrict tools in the AI client: Claude Code uses deny rules and Codex uses enabled_tools and disabled_tools. Both are shown in Connect Claude Code and Codex.
Royal MCP Pro adds Custom Endpoint Profiles: you create an endpoint, tick the tools it may use, and give that endpoint to a project or a client. The limit applies on your site, whatever client connects.
Working on staging first
For a new site or a large change, build on a staging copy or a local site and move it live with your host’s staging tool. Claude Code and Codex run on your computer, so they can reach a local or private staging site. Claude and ChatGPT in the browser need a public HTTPS address.
Royal MCP doesn’t copy content between environments; that stays with your host or your migration tool.
What happens if you remove Royal MCP
Deactivating
The connection endpoint stops answering, so every AI client loses access straight away. Nothing else changes.
Your content stays
Everything an AI created or changed is ordinary WordPress content: posts, pages, media, Elementor widgets, Divi modules, menus and settings. It stays in place and you keep editing it in WordPress and in your builder. None of it depends on Royal MCP.
Deleting the plugin
- Royal MCP (Free) removes its own settings, connected clients, activity log and any unused undo tokens. If you install it again, reconnect your AI clients.
- Royal MCP Pro keeps its settings, activity log, audit log and undo history when you delete it, unless you turn on Delete all data when the plugin is deleted in its settings first.
Common questions
Can an AI publish to my site without me?
Only if you let it. New posts and pages start as drafts, read-only mode blocks every change, and you can deny publishing tools in Claude Code or Codex. Edits to a page that is already live take effect immediately, so clone it first or work on staging.
How long can I undo a change?
72 hours in Royal MCP (Free), one change per undo token. Up to 7 days in Royal MCP Pro, including bulk changes.
Will my pages break if I remove Royal MCP?
No. Pages built or edited through Royal MCP are normal WordPress and page-builder content and keep working without it.
Can I stop the AI from deleting things?
Yes. Turn on read-only mode, or deny the delete tools in your AI client. With Royal MCP Pro, leave them out of the endpoint profile.