Your first safe session
Try PowerWP AI with a read-only connection. Eight example questions, what your AI app does, and how to check the activity log afterwards.
A first session should not change anything. You give your AI app a connection that can only read, ask it to look around, and then check in the activity log exactly what it did. It shows you how PowerWP AI behaves before you give any app more permissions.
Set up a read-only connection#
- Open PowerWP AI › Connections and choose your AI app. If you have not installed and activated the plugin yet, start with the Quickstart.
- Under the question about what the app may do on your site, choose Read-only diagnostics. On the Free plan it is the only choice.
- Under More options pick a short expiry, such as 7 days, if you only want to try it.
- Connect the app with the steps on the screen and wait for the green "is connected" box.
Read-only diagnostics gives the app the Read & diagnostics permission: site and server information, logs, health checks, content, options, WooCommerce data and read-only database queries. Passwords and keys are masked for connections without the Secrets permission.
Read-only means nothing is changed. What your app reads still reaches your AI provider, so ask only for what you need. See Data and privacy.
Questions to ask#
These are examples. Paste them into your AI app one at a time. Adjust the wording to your site.
1. The overview
Give me an overview of my site.The app calls site_overview and answers with versions, theme, active plugins, caching, pending updates and recent PHP errors.
Example reply on the demo store your-store.com. Your app's wording will differ.
"your-store.com runs WordPress 7.1 on PHP 8.3 with the Kitchenware theme and 14 active plugins. Page caching is on. Three plugin updates are waiting. In the last 24 hours the PHP log holds one warning, from the Recipe Cards plugin. I changed nothing."
In PowerWP AI › Activity you see the call to site_overview, marked OK.
2. Errors
Are there any errors in the logs from the last 24 hours? Don't change anything.Uses error_log_read. It can read the WordPress debug log, the PHP error log and WooCommerce logs.
3. Problems on real pages
Check my homepage, one product page and the cart for problems.Uses page_check, which loads each page from the server and reports the status, timing, PHP errors printed in the page and WordPress critical-error screens.
4. Slow pages
Which of those pages is slowest, and what could be slowing it down? Only report, don't change anything.Builds on page_check timings and may add server_info for PHP limits, caching and disk space.
5. Updates
Which plugins and themes need updates, and is any of them risky to update?Uses updates_check and plugins_list.
6. WooCommerce health
How healthy is my WooCommerce store? Look at failed orders, stock problems and payment gateways.Uses wc_overview. This needs WooCommerce. Orders and customers contain personal data, so ask only for what you need.
7. SEO basics
Do an SEO check of my homepage: title, meta description, headings, images without alt text. Only report.The SEO check for one page recipe covers this. See SEO audit and fixes for more.
8. A security look
Run a security check and list anything suspicious. Don't change anything.Uses security_scan (a heuristic scan) and integrity_check (compares WordPress core files with the official checksums). A clean result is not proof that the site is clean.
What your AI app does#
Each question becomes one or more tool calls: requests to your site that PowerWP AI checks against the connection's permissions before running them. With Read-only diagnostics only reading tools run. If you ask for a change, the app is told it lacks the permission and should say so instead of working around it.
Some apps ask you to trust the server or to approve each tool call. That is the app's own setting, not PowerWP AI's.
Read the activity log afterwards#
- Open PowerWP AI › Activity. Entries are listed newest first.
- Check the Last 24 hours numbers at the top: AI requests, tool calls, errors and security events.
- Set Channel to AI requests to see only what your AI app did. Each row shows the time, the tool name, the status (OK, Error, Tool error or Denied), the client (your AI app), the IP address and the duration.
- Select a row to open its details.
- Open PowerWP AI › Changes. After a read-only session there should be no new changes.
Passwords and keys are hidden before anything is written to the log. Entries are kept for 60 days by default (Settings › Activity log). You can export what is loaded as CSV or JSON.
A "Denied" entry is not a problem. It means PowerWP AI refused something the connection was not allowed to do, which is the permission system working.
Next steps#
When you want your app to make changes, create a second connection with more permissions, for example Content manager. On the Free plan, upgrade first: the key stays the same. Ask for a plan before any change, and create a checkpoint before multi-step work so you can roll back what that connection changed in one step.