Editor’s note, 24 September 2026: Checknaut 5.0 audits and fixes any WordPress site for free, and page building is Checknaut Pro. This guide used to say you need a Divi 5 site; the requirement is now WordPress 6.5+ on PHP 8.0+, any theme, and Step 1 and Step 4 are updated to match.
MCP — the Model Context Protocol — is how AI assistants like Claude connect to real tools. Instead of pasting HTML into a chat window and pasting the answer back, Claude gets a set of capabilities it can use directly on your site: read this page, audit that section, fix this finding. Checknaut is an MCP server that lives inside your WordPress install and speaks Divi 5 natively.
Here is the whole setup, start to first audit. Budget ten minutes.
Step 1: Install the plugin
Download Checknaut from checknautpro.com, then in wp-admin go to Plugins → Add New → Upload Plugin, upload the zip and activate. You need WordPress 6.5 or later on PHP 8.0 or later, with permalinks enabled — which is nearly every site — on any theme. Audits and fixes work with any builder; page building (Checknaut Pro) works on Divi 5, Elementor and the block editor, and the rescue scan reads Divi 4 content you are migrating. Checknaut’s wordpress.org listing is pending, so upload the zip rather than searching for it.
Step 2: Copy your connection details
Open the new Checknaut menu in wp-admin. The Connection tab shows your site’s MCP endpoint and walks you through creating the credential Claude will use. The plugin includes a live connection-status indicator, so once Claude is attached you will see it confirmed right on the dashboard — no guessing about whether the handshake worked.
Step 3: Connect Claude to Divi
In Claude, add Checknaut as a connector (in the Claude apps this lives under Settings → Connectors → Add custom connector; in Claude Code it is one claude mcp add command). Paste the endpoint from Step 2, authorize, and you are connected. The Connection tab in wp-admin flips to connected the next time Claude talks to your site.
Step 4: Say something
Good first prompts, in ascending order of ambition:
- “Get the site context.” — Claude reads your Divi and WordPress versions, breakpoints, design tokens and installed modules. A safe hello-world.
- “Audit this site for accessibility.” — the a11y audit walks every page and returns findings with exact module paths.
- “Run the SEO audit and tell me the three most valuable fixes.” — audits are Claude-readable by design; asking for priorities is where MCP starts beating dashboards.
- “Build me a pricing page using the site’s design system.” — with Checknaut Pro, the full builder toolset: sections, rows, modules, presets, design tokens.
What Claude can actually do once connected
Checknaut exposes 175 tools. The free plugin carries 53 of them: the audits, the one-click fixes, the readers, the diagnostics and the connection itself. Checknaut Pro adds the builders: page building, fixing a cause on every page at once, design-system authoring, and posts, Theme Builder templates (Divi 5 and Elementor Pro) and WooCommerce store pages (Divi 5).
And because letting an AI edit a live site should make you ask hard questions: every write is journaled, every fix is individually undoable, and snapshots protect risky work. We wrote up the whole safety model in snapshots, undo and safety switches.
Troubleshooting the two things that ever go wrong
- Claude cannot reach the site: your host or a security plugin is blocking the REST API. Allow the plugin’s endpoint and reconnect.
- Connected, but tools error: run the built-in self-test — a couple of thousand checks that verify every tool against your actual install and name what is wrong.
Other connector and sign-in questions are answered in the FAQs.
Start free: download Checknaut, connect Claude, and run your first audit tonight. The 53 free tools stay free, fixes included.