Code Engine – PHP Snippets, AI Functions & Automation for WordPress vs Crawlantix AI Bot Tracker

Code Engine is a snippets manager that doesn’t stop at snippets. Yes, it runs your PHP and JavaScript exactly where and when you want: frontend, backend, on a schedule, or inside your content. But its real magic is what happens after you write a function: the same little piece of code instantly becomes a tool your AI chatbots can call, a step you can drag into a visual workflow, and an endpoint the outside world can trigger. One function, three superpowers. Most “code snippets” plugins stop at a textarea and a toggle. Code Engine treats your functions as first-class building blocks for the whole Meow Apps ecosystem, and for anything that can speak REST. Think out of the box, let your creativity flow, because the possibilities really are endless! ✨ For more, check the official website and come say hi on the Discord. Quick Intro Hello! ☀️ I built Code Engine because I was tired of pasting mystery snippets into functions.php and praying. I wanted a place where small bits of code are organized, safe, AI-assisted, and reusable everywhere. Here’s the idea. You write a function (or let the AI write it for you from a plain-English description). That function immediately shows up in three places: AI Engine: your chatbots and MCP clients (Claude, ChatGPT, Claude Code) can call it as a tool, with real arguments. Ask “how many orders shipped today?” and your chatbot runs your function to answer. Workflow Engine: your function appears in the step picker as its very own block. Drag it onto the canvas, wire it between an AI step and a Slack step, done. No glue code. REST / External tools: give it a secure endpoint and a token, then trigger it from Make.com, n8n, Zapier, a cron job, or a webhook. You never wrote an “integration.” You just wrote a function. Code Engine did the rest. 🤝 Core Modules 🧩 Snippets Manager Backend, Frontend, Persistent, Scheduled, Functions, and in-content (PHP/JS) snippets, all in one clean dashboard with tags, search, scope filters, and priorities. 🪄 AI-Assisted Coding Describe what you want in plain English and let AI Engine write the snippet: code, name, arguments, and scope included. Refine existing code or implement it straight from your comments. 🤖 Functions as AI Tools Every Function snippet becomes a function-calling tool and an MCP tool, so your AI Engine chatbots (and external AI agents) can actually do things on your site, not just talk. 🔀 Functions as Workflow Steps Workflow Engine surfaces each of your functions as its own draggable step. Your custom logic becomes a first-class citizen on the automation canvas. 🌐 External Access (REST) Expose any runnable snippet through a secured REST endpoint with a bearer token. Perfect for Make.com, n8n, webhooks, and scheduled external jobs. 🛡️ Safe Mode A snippet that throws a fatal error is automatically caught and disabled before it can take your site down. Code with confidence. ⏰ Scheduling Run a snippet daily at a chosen time via WP-Cron (reports, cleanups, syncs) without touching the server crontab. 🧱 Code Blocks & Shortcodes (Pro) Drop PHP or JS straight into a post or page with a Gutenberg block or the [code-engine] shortcode, with safety guards. 🧩 Snippets, the way they should be Code Engine organizes your code by scope, so each snippet runs exactly where it belongs: Persistent: runs everywhere (frontend and backend). Your everyday “add this to functions.php” code, but managed. Frontend: runs only on the public site. Backend: runs only in the admin. Function: a named, callable function with typed arguments and defaults. This is the reusable building block (see below). Scheduled: runs on a WP-Cron schedule, at the hour and minute you pick. Content (PHP / JS): runs inside a specific post or page, via a Gutenberg Code Block or the [code-engine] shortcode (Pro). Everything is searchable, taggable, sortable by priority, and importable/exportable. The CodeMirror editor gives you proper syntax highlighting and keyboard shortcuts (Cmd+S to save, Cmd+Enter to run). A nikic/php-parser pass validates your PHP before it ever runs. 🪄 Let AI write it for you Don’t feel like writing the boilerplate? Describe the snippet in plain language and Code Engine, powered by AI Engine, generates the whole thing: the code, a sensible name, a description, the right scope, and, for functions, the argument list with names, types, and defaults. Already have code? Ask the AI to modify it from a prompt, or write a few comments describing what you want and let it fill in the implementation. It’s pair programming, right inside your dashboard. ✨ The big idea: write once, use everywhere This is what makes Code Engine different. A Function snippet is not just code you call from other code. It’s a reusable capability that the rest of your stack can plug into. The moment you save it, the same function is available in three places at once: 1. As an AI tool, for chatbots and AI agents With AI Engine active, your functions are exposed through function calling and over MCP (Model Context Protocol). Your on-site chatbot can run them mid-conversation, and external AI agents (Claude, Claude Code, ChatGPT, OpenClaw) can call them too. Want a chatbot that checks stock, looks up a booking, or kicks off a process? Write the function; the chatbot gains the skill. 2. As a workflow step, for automation With Workflow Engine, every active function shows up in the Add-step picker as its own block, named after your snippet, with one input per argument. Drag it onto the canvas and wire it between other steps: an AI step that summarizes, your function that saves, a Social Engine step that posts. There’s also a generic “Execute snippet (by ID / by name)” step when you want to call one dynamically. You never write integration code; your function is the integration. 3. As a REST endpoint, for the outside world Give a snippet a custom endpoint name and a bearer token, and it’s instantly callable from anywhere: POST /wp-json/code-engine/v1/snippets-endpoint/your-endpoint Pass arguments as JSON in the body, secure it with a token, and trigger it from Make.com, n8n, Zapier, GitHub Actions, or a humble cron job. Automation without a middleware bill. 🛡️ Safe by default Running arbitrary code is powerful, so Code Engine takes safety seriously: Safe Mode catches fatal errors and auto-disables the offending snippet, so a typo never white-screens your site. REST whitelisting means global snippets only run on trusted REST routes by default, so you choose what to open up. Per-snippet tokens secure your external endpoints. Validation with a real PHP parser before code is saved. For developers who want fewer guardrails, there’s a “Bypass REST Security” option and filters (mwcode_rest_authorized, mwcode_rest_whitelist) to tailor exactly what’s allowed. Works beautifully with the Meow Apps family Code Engine is one engine in a connected set, each one useful alone, magical together: AI Engine: chatbots, content generation, and MCP. Turns your functions into AI tools. Workflow Engine: visual automation. Turns your functions into draggable steps. SEO Engine: smart, lightweight AI SEO. Social Engine: schedule and automate social posts. Why Code Engine? Reusable, not throwaway Other snippet plugins give you a place to paste code. Code Engine gives you a place to build capabilities that your AI, your workflows, and your external tools can all use. Native to WordPress Clean, fast, and built the WordPress way. No clunky external dashboards, no bloat. AI-native Write snippets with AI, expose them to AI. The whole loop lives in your wp-admin. Developer friendly REST API, MCP tools, function calling, scheduling, import/export, and plenty of filters to hook into. Cared for Part of the Meow Apps family, with regular updates and a real human behind it. 💕

Crawlantix AI Bot Tracker monitors visits from 30+ AI crawlers and gives you visibility into how bots interact with your site. See which bots visit, what pages they crawl, and catch misbehaving bots with a built-in logging-only honeypot. Lightweight, privacy-first, and fully functional out of the box. Free forever — no artificial limits on bot detection. Tracked Bots (30+): GPTBot / ChatGPT-User / OAI-SearchBot (OpenAI) ClaudeBot / Claude-Web / anthropic-ai (Anthropic) Googlebot / Google-Extended (Google / Gemini) bingbot (Microsoft / Copilot) PerplexityBot (Perplexity) DeepSeek, Qwen (Alibaba), Mistral AI Applebot-Extended (Apple Intelligence) Meta-ExternalAgent (Meta AI) Bytespider (ByteDance) CCBot (Common Crawl), Amazonbot, YouBot, DuckDuckBot AI2Bot, Diffbot, Timpibot, PetalBot SemrushBot, AhrefsBot, DataForSeoBot, MJ12bot, DotBot Features: Lightweight Bot Detection (30+ Bots) Hooks into WordPress init with a priority-1 action. Bails immediately on non-AI User-Agents — zero performance cost for human visitors. All 30+ bots tracked. Dashboard with Charts Clean dashboard with trend chart and provider breakdown pie chart (Chart.js, bundled locally). Summary cards show total visits, unique bots, pages crawled, and daily averages. No external dependencies. Bot Activity Table Dedicated tab showing all detected bots with visits, bytes transferred, 24h sparklines, verification status, and honeypot hit counts. Crawled Pages See which pages bots visit most, which bots crawl them, and when they were last seen. Honeypot Endpoint (Logging Only) A CSS-hidden, aria-hidden, rel=nofollow link is injected in the footer. Only raw link-extracting bots will follow it. Visits are logged for transparency. Active defense (blocking, tarpit, rate-limit, decoy, shadowban) is reserved for the paid build. Bot Verification Reverse DNS (FCrDNS) verification for major bots — confirms Googlebot, GPTBot, ClaudeBot, etc. are actually who they claim to be. Privacy First IP addresses are SHA-256 hashed with a per-install salt before storage. Raw IPs are never saved. Includes WordPress Privacy API exporter and eraser hooks so data-subject access and erasure requests can flow through the standard WordPress Tools → Personal Data workflow. AI Discovery Layer Serves ai-plugin.json (a discovery manifest that tells visiting AI agents the site is monitored) and llms.txt / llms-full.txt (text content authored by the admin via WordPress pages with slugs llms-txt and llms-full-txt) at the site root. Data Retention Bot visit data is retained for 30 days. Older records are automatically pruned via WP-Cron. External Services This plugin connects to the following external services: Reverse DNS Lookups The bot verification feature performs reverse DNS (FCrDNS) lookups using PHP’s gethostbyaddr() and gethostbyname() functions to verify that bots are who they claim to be (e.g., confirming a request claiming to be Googlebot actually originates from Google’s network). These lookups send the bot’s IP address to your server’s configured DNS resolver and the authoritative DNS servers for the IP address’s reverse DNS zone. Under some privacy regimes, IP addresses may be considered personal data. This feature runs automatically when a known AI bot visits your site and cannot currently be disabled via the admin UI (a filter hook crawlantix_enable_verification is available for developers). No other external services, third-party APIs, or remote requests are used by this plugin. All analytics data is stored locally in your WordPress database. Chart.js is bundled locally — no CDN requests are made. Privacy Policy Crawlantix AI Bot Tracker is designed with privacy as a core principle: Bot traffic only. The plugin only tracks automated bot traffic identified by User-Agent strings. Human visitors are not tracked and no cookies are set. No raw IP addresses stored. All IP addresses are SHA-256 hashed with a per-install random salt before storage (or AUTH_SALT when defined in wp-config.php). The original IP address cannot be recovered from the hash. Note: pseudonymous IP hashes may still be considered personal data under GDPR. Data stored per bot visit: IP hash, User-Agent string, requested URL, HTTP referrer URL, request method, timestamp, and derived fields (bytes transferred, bot verification status). Referrer URLs may contain personal data depending on the referring site. WordPress Privacy API integration. The plugin registers exporter and eraser callbacks with WordPress core, so data-subject access and erasure requests filed through Tools → Personal Data flow correctly. No external data transmission. All analytics data remains in your local WordPress database. No data is sent to Crawlantix or third-party services. The only external communication is DNS lookups for bot verification (see External Services above). Data retention controls. Bot visit data is automatically pruned after 30 days. Administrators can delete all collected data on uninstall via the “Delete Data on Uninstall” Settings toggle. For sites that require a formal privacy policy disclosure, you may note: “We use the Crawlantix AI Bot Tracker plugin to monitor automated AI bot traffic to our site. This plugin records bot User-Agent strings, pseudonymous IP hashes, pages visited, referrer URLs, and timestamps for detected bot traffic only. Raw IP addresses are cryptographically hashed before storage. No human visitor data is collected.” Premium Version Crawlantix also offers paid tiers at crawlantix.com for site owners who need active bot defense in addition to monitoring. The paid build adds the following features on top of everything in this free version: Protect tier Active honeypot responses: HTTP 403 block, tarpit (random 5–25s delay with worker-exhaustion safeguards), rate limit 429, decoy content, shadowban. Auto-block of repeat honeypot offenders, with configurable thresholds. Per-IP response rules — apply a chosen response strategy to specific IP hashes (up to 200 rules). Custom honeypot paths (up to 5) with a reserved-route safety list. Email alerts for honeypot hits and parameter explosion patterns. Robots.txt trap entries that catch non-compliant scrapers. Optional override that suppresses the WordPress core /wp/v2/users REST endpoints (username-enumeration hardening, off by default and easy to opt back in). Optimize tier Full REST API at /wp-json/ai-tracker/v1/ with API key authentication and 13 endpoints (status, stats, page, trends, bots, top-pages, report, export, alerts, honeypot, crawled-pages, etc.). GeoIP location tracking with MaxMind GeoLite2. Crawl Analytics tab with deeper traffic-quality metrics. Extended data retention up to 365 days. Scale tier Backup & restore — export all data as JSON; import with merge or replace modes. Unlimited retention. Priority support. The paid build is a drop-in upgrade: same plugin slug, same database tables, same option keys, so all your historical bot data carries over with no migration step on your part.