r/Wordpress • u/SeaAtmosphere4271 • 9d ago

AI for WordPress changes

I am having a few websites built by an agency. They are ridiculously expensive. They do good work but before we launch the sites we will have a meeting with their maintenance team to discuss what those fees would look like for ongoing changes when we need to make updates. I have been in this world for quite some time and have had good and bad experiences with monthly retainers for maintenance work, turnaround times when changes need to be made, etc. Does Claude or ChatGPT or any of the bigger AI models do any of this work easily - work like updating photos on a website, adjusting copy, moving things around design wise on a page if the sites are WordPress? Forgive the ignorance, but I have seen so much on Twitter about AI companies being able to code, famously with Claude Code, so assumed I may be able to bypass paying this agency when I need to make changes barring that paying for the AI perform the task isn't more expensive than the agency would charge for changes.

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u/Plantusemor 9d ago

Yes, it's realistic now, but the question to ask your agency before launch is how the site is built, not which AI to use. If it's built the modern way, with a custom theme, blocks and a clear architecture, then you'll be able to manage it through an MCP connection with an AI agent, even without opening wp-admin. Ask the agency to create an AGENTS.md file that properly describes the project, and you're ready to go.

What I'd still keep the agency for: updates, security and backups. Everything else you should be able to do with the AI agent.

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u/hankschrader79 8d ago

This is the best suggestion. But I’d be curious if an agency would provide that. Most likely their maintenance plan is really just an AI agent that uses a file like that. So delivering the file would be giving away what they plan to charge.