OpenStation vs SiteAgent for Aura

wp-admin forgets. OpenStation doesn’t. You know the moment. You’re deep in a post and you need one image from the Media Library. You click over, find it, click back, and everything you had going is gone. Your scroll position, your half-typed thought, the three other things you had queued up in your head. That’s not a bug you hit. That’s the design. wp-admin shows you one screen at a time, and every navigation throws the last one away. It has worked this way since 2003, like a fridge that empties itself every time you close the door. WordPress has rebuilt almost everything else. The editor, the site editor, the patterns, the styles. The admin’s one-screen-at-a-time model is the layer nobody touched. OpenStation touches it. Install it and admin screens become draggable, resizable windows. Edit a post while the Media Library sits open next to it. Drag an image from one window straight into the other. Keep comments open in the corner. Reload the browser and your window layout — open pages, positions, sizes, and window states — comes back where you left it. OpenStation itself is free, GPL, and opt-in per user. One click in the admin bar turns it on for you. One click turns it off. Nobody else on your site sees anything change, and deactivating the plugin restores the classic admin exactly. No Core patches and no lock-in. Optional AI providers may charge for their service. Built and maintained by Automattic, the company behind WordPress.com, Jetpack, WooCommerce, and Tumblr. Work on more than one thing at once Admin pages open as windows, including pages added by most other plugins. Drag them, resize them, snap them, tile them, minimize them to a taskbar. The admin menu becomes a dock of icons. Two editors open at once is one click away. Never lose your place Moving between open windows leaves each page in place. Across reloads, OpenStation remembers your open pages, window positions, sizes and states, virtual desktops, and focus. Closing a window with unsaved changes warns you first. A desk you can actually put things on Drop posts, media, and links right onto the wallpaper. Sort them into folders. Trash them to a Trash that actually holds things. The stuff you’re working on this week can just sit out where you can see it. One desktop per job Virtual desktops, the way your operating system does them. One for writing. One for the store. One for comment triage. One for that redesign you keep poking at. Switch between them without closing anything. Find anything with Cmd+K The full WordPress command palette, plus slash commands from your plugins, all under one keystroke. Turn on the optional AI assistant and you can ask it things like “which post had the comment asking for the recipe?” and it searches your own content to answer. (Requires an AI provider configured in Settings → Connectors on WordPress 7.0+. Details under “External services” below.) See how your site fits together The Corkboard is an interactive, zoomable map of how your posts, pages, and products link to each other. Pan around it. Find the orphans. Find the hubs. Running a store? Orders, Products, Coupons, and Customers become browsable folders with stock and sale ribbons. Open a customer to see their lifetime spend and what they buy most. Follow a product to its buyers, or a coupon to who redeemed it. Make it yours Wallpapers, from color presets to animated scenes to your own photo. Live widgets pinned to the desktop: drafts, stats, recent comments, a focus timer. Uploadable desktop themes, including a built-in Legacy theme that brings the old WordPress blue back in one click. And Mio, a soft-body desk companion that drifts across your wallpaper and gets bumped around by your windows. Off by default. You’ll turn it on. For developers Extend OpenStation through documented PHP and JavaScript APIs. Register windows, icons, wallpapers, widgets, commands, and settings tabs through stable openstation_register_* PHP APIs and a typed JavaScript API; customize dock items through documented hooks; add AI tools with the WordPress Abilities API. Copy-paste examples live in the developer docs on GitHub. External services No external service is required for OpenStation’s desktop interface. The optional AI Assistant and two user-initiated enrichment features make the external requests described below. AI Assistant The optional AI Assistant sends data to the AI provider you configure in WordPress’s Settings → Connectors (for example OpenAI, Anthropic, or Google). Generation is routed through WordPress 7.0’s built-in AI Client, which supplies the credentials stored in Connectors. The plugin never handles an API key itself. With no provider configured in Connectors, no external AI requests are made. When the AI Assistant is enabled and a user invokes it (via Cmd+K or the slash-command palette): What is sent: the user’s prompt, the conversation history for the active session, and tool-call metadata. The plugin’s built-in tools (search_posts, search_pages, search_comments) run WordPress’s native keyword search and may include excerpts of the matching posts/pages/comments in tool results, which are then sent back to the provider as part of the agentic loop. When it is sent: on user-initiated AI requests, and (if an administrator enables “Score new comments with AI”) on comment-save hooks for spam analysis. Posts, pages, and taxonomy terms are not sent automatically. Why it is sent: to obtain model completions and tool-call decisions that drive the AI Assistant. Who provides the service: whichever provider you configured in Settings → Connectors. Which provider (and endpoint) receives the data depends entirely on that configuration. Review the chosen provider’s own terms and privacy policy (e.g. OpenAI, Anthropic, or Google). URL shortcut favicons When an authorized user creates a desktop shortcut to an external URL, OpenStation asks that URL for its page HTML and favicon so the shortcut can display the site’s icon. The request is made from your WordPress server and sends the requested URL, the server’s IP address, an OpenStation user-agent string, and normal HTTP request metadata to the operator of that site. This happens only when a user creates the shortcut. The destination site’s terms and privacy policy apply. WordPress.org plugin information When an authorized user opens or refreshes parts of OpenStation’s Plugins window, OpenStation may request public plugin details, update metadata, and review excerpts from WordPress.org. These requests send plugin slugs, the site’s locale, and normal HTTP request metadata to WordPress.org. This information is used only to display and manage plugins. Review the WordPress.org Privacy Policy. OpenStation’s OAuth relay does not contact a service by itself. Third-party plugins that configure the relay may contact their own providers and are responsible for disclosing those services. Credits OpenStation is brought to you by Automattic. The plugin is open source under GPLv2-or-later; contributions are welcome on GitHub. Third-party libraries The plugin bundles the following third-party JavaScript library, loaded on demand only when a feature that needs it is in use: PixiJS (MIT License) — used by the Corkboard window, built-in canvas wallpapers (e.g. the animated WordPress logo), the Mio desk companion, and the Inkfall typing game. PixiJS is loaded from the plugin’s own assets/vendor/ directory; no CDN requests are made. Data files The Inkfall game’s word list (assets/games/inkfall/words.txt) is generated from the following sources (attribution also ships in the file’s header): FrequencyWords by Hermit Dave (CC-BY-SA 4.0) — English word-frequency ranking derived from the OpenSubtitles corpus. english-words by dwyl (Unlicense) — used as a validity filter. LDNOOBW English list (CC-BY 4.0) — used as an exclusion filter.

SiteAgent turns every WordPress site into one an AI agent can safely operate — update, maintain, audit, and fix. Once the site is connected to Aura and its approval key is provisioned, mutating actions are gated behind human approval and recorded in a full audit trail; safe batch updates and block edits are snapshotted so they can be rolled back. It’s the on-site half of Aura, the governed control room agencies use to run whole fleets of client sites alongside their servers, CDN, and DNS. Plugin and core updates are the riskiest thing you do on a live client site. SiteAgent makes them safer: safe batch updates run behind health checks and roll back automatically if the site breaks, and every plugin in that path is zip-snapshotted first. With Aura’s approval key in place, an agent can’t silently push a change — mutating actions wait for a human to approve them. Think of it as the undo button for AI on your clients’ sites. Install this plugin on any WordPress site to connect it to Aura — no SSH, no wp-admin juggling, no manual logins. What You Can Do Monitor site health — See WordPress version, PHP version, installed plugins & themes, database info, and disk usage in real time. Update plugins, themes & core remotely — Push updates to any connected site from the Aura dashboard, no wp-admin login. Safe batch updates with auto-rollback — Run chunked updates with health checks; if an update breaks the site, the plugin restores the previous version automatically. Per-plugin rollback — Every update is zip-snapshotted first; restore any plugin to its last good state on demand. Bulk translation & database upgrades — Update all language packs and run WordPress database migrations remotely. One-click connect (magic link) — Connect a site to Aura straight from wp-admin — no manual token copy/paste. AI-agent ready (27 MCP tools) — Exposes machine-readable, JSON-schema tools for AI-driven management, including SEO/accessibility/performance/broken-link auditors, on-site SEO-meta read/write (Rank Math, Yoast, SEOPress), and Gutenberg block read/edit. Read tools run on demand; mutating tools are approval-gated through Aura, and every call is audited. Zero frontend impact — The plugin only registers REST API endpoints. No scripts, no styles, no database queries on visitor-facing page loads. How It Works After activation, click Connect to Aura on the Settings → SiteAgent page for a one-click magic-link connection, or copy the Site Token shown once and paste it into your Aura dashboard manually. From that point, Aura communicates with your site over a signed, authenticated REST API to pull health data and push updates. Security Defence-in-depth protects every request: WordPress Application Password — Standard WordPress auth with capability checks (manage_options / update_*). Only authorized administrators can trigger actions. Hashed Site Token — A per-site token sent via the X-Aura-Token header. Only a SHA-256 hash is stored (never the raw token), compared timing-safely. Tokens from older versions migrate to a hash automatically. Brute-force throttling — Repeated bad-token attempts from an IP are blocked. Signed magic-link connect — The onboarding callback is HMAC-signed with a one-time secret and timestamp, so the token exchange can’t be hijacked or replayed. IP / Domain allowlist (optional) — Restrict API access to your Aura instance, with Cloudflare and reverse-proxy header support. You can rotate the token anytime from Settings → SiteAgent → Regenerate Token. REST API Endpoints Core endpoints under /wp-json/aura/v1/: GET /status — Full site health report GET /updates — Check available updates (core, plugins, themes, translations) POST /update/core / /update/plugin / /update/theme / /update/translations — Apply updates POST /update/database — Run WordPress database upgrades POST /connect — Magic-link token exchange (public, HMAC-signed, 10-minute expiry) Version 2 endpoints under /wp-json/aura/v2/: GET /health — HTTP, PHP fatal, white-screen and DB connectivity checks POST /update/batch — Chunked batch updates with auto-rollback on health failure POST /rollback/{plugin} — Restore a plugin from its most recent backup POST /rules — Receive Aura’s signed operator ruleset; carrying unbind: true it ends this site’s binding instead While a site is disconnected by Aura, every write endpoint answers 403 aura_site_unbound and reads keep working; the disconnect answer carries cleanup_complete and leftovers (what the site still holds), and GET /status reports unbound until the site is reconnected or the remaining Aura data is removed from the settings screen. MCP tools under /wp-json/aura/mcp/: POST /tools/list / POST /tools/execute — Enumerate and run AI-agent tools GET /context — Full site context for AI decision-making AI Agent Tools (MCP) SiteAgent ships 27 built-in tools for AI agents. Read tools return information and run on demand; write tools change the site and are queued for human approval through Aura — an agent can never silently mutate a production site. Read tools: get_site_context — WordPress/PHP/theme/plugin/disk/performance snapshot with detected issues get_database_info — Database size, largest tables, autoloaded-options weight, expired transients scan_security — Scored security posture (file-edit lockdown, debug exposure, SSL, default admin/prefix, open registration, PHP version) scan_seo — SEO posture (search-engine visibility, permalinks, XML sitemap, site title) plus a sampled content audit (thin content, missing excerpts/featured images) scan_a11y — Accessibility audit over sampled content (images missing alt text, non-descriptive link text, heading structure, document language) perf_check — Performance posture (persistent object cache, OPcache, page-cache plugin, PHP version, autoload weight, active plugin count, memory limit) scan_broken_links — Link triage over a content sample with no outbound HTTP (empty/anchor-only links, dev/staging hosts, unresolved internal links) list_users — Users with roles and post counts, administrators flagged (never returns secrets) check_health — Live health gate: HTTP status, PHP fatals, white-screen, database connectivity scan_error_log — Tails and severity-groups the error log, surfacing recent fatals check_vulnerabilities — Plugin update-currency check against WordPress.org (a version check, not a vulnerability/CVE feed; covers wp.org-hosted plugins) check_core_checksums — Core-file integrity against the official WordPress.org checksum manifest (modified/missing/unexpected files, fetched over HTTPS only) scan_executable_files — Uploads-directory observations: PHP/executable files, .htaccess overrides, and symlinks (reported, never followed) audit_admin_accounts — Privileged-account facts: administrators with recency, admin capabilities outside the role, application-password counts, multisite super admins audit_cron — Bounded WP-Cron inventory with sub-60-second-schedule and unresolved-callback fact-flags audit_mcp_exposure — Which other MCP servers are registered on this site, and how many abilities pass the discovery rule such a server applies (abilities are registered site-wide, not per-plugin, so a server resolving targets from that registry picks up mutating ones outside SiteAgent’s approval path). The counts describe the abilities, not what any server currently serves. Reports only; changes nothing audit_rules — Whether a signed operator ruleset is present and how old it is, 24h block/warn counts, expired-but-listed rules, and the enforcement points in this build. Reports only; changes nothing get_seo_meta — Read a post/page’s SEO title, description, and focus keyword from the active SEO plugin (Rank Math, Yoast, or SEOPress) list_page_blocks — Read a page’s Gutenberg block structure (block names, attributes, nesting) Write tools (approval-gated): update_plugin_safely — Backup, update, health-check, auto-rollback on failure clear_caches — Flush object/opcode caches and detected page-cache plugins cleanup_transients — Remove expired transients to reduce autoload bloat cleanup_orphaned_assets — Find and remove unused media (dry-run by default) backup_plugins — Zip-snapshot one or all active plugins as a rollback safety net set_seo_meta — Write a post/page’s SEO title / description / focus keyword on the active SEO plugin (Rank Math, Yoast, or SEOPress) — on-site, so it works even when a WAF blocks the plugin’s own REST endpoint update_page_block — Update a Gutenberg block’s content or attributes (snapshot-first, reversible) create_page_from_blocks — Create a new page from a Gutenberg block spec (draft-first) Tools are classified by verb so the Aura Fleet gateway applies the right risk and approval policy automatically. Pro: the SiteAgent Power Pack Everything above is free and ships in this plugin. Agencies that need an agent to fix a site — not just report on it — can add the SiteAgent Power Pack, a separate companion plugin that registers higher-capability tools through this plugin’s own tool registry. It is not included in this download and is not distributed on WordPress.org — the tools it adds execute code, so they don’t belong in a hosted repository. It comes with the Aura Agency and Studio plans, or as SiteAgent Pro. What it adds: read_file — read a text file from inside wp-content (jailed; refuses wp-config.php). db_query — a single read-only SQL statement (SELECT / SHOW / EXPLAIN), row-capped. write_file — write a file inside wp-content, snapshot-first so it can be rolled back. run_wp_cli — run an allowlisted WP-CLI command, with no shell and no metacharacters. execute_php — run a PHP snippet against the full WordPress API. These are governed harder than anything in the free set, deliberately: Off until you arm them. The write and code tools do nothing until the site owner sets an explicit constant in wp-config.php for each one. Installing the Power Pack alone enables no writes and no code execution. Human approval, cryptographically enforced. Once the site holds Aura’s approval key (provisioned when you connect the site), each of these calls requires a single-use, signed grant bound to that exact tool and its exact parameters — one only the Aura dashboard can mint, after a human approves the action. A leaked Site Token cannot run them. (Until a site has that key, the gate is dormant — so connect the site from Aura before arming anything.) Reversible where it can be. File writes are snapshotted first, so there’s a previous state to restore. The safety model is governance, not a sandbox: execute_php is powerful by design. The controls are the constant you set, the human who approves the call, and the audit trail — not a promise that arbitrary code is safe. Learn more at my-aura.app/siteagent. About Aura Aura is a full-stack operations dashboard by Digitizer that brings servers, applications, DNS zones, and CDN pull zones from Cloudways, Hostinger VPS, Cloudflare, and Bunny.net into a single unified interface. SiteAgent extends that reach into every WordPress installation — so you can manage your entire infrastructure, including WordPress sites, from one place. Free to Use The plugin is completely free and open source (GPLv2+). You need a free or paid Aura account to connect your sites. Sign up at my-aura.app. Links Aura Dashboard Documentation GitHub Repository Digitizer