OpenStation vs VigIA – AI Visibility, Analytics & Control

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.

VigIA (Spanish for “lookout” or “watchman”, incorporating “IA” – Spanish for “AI”) is a complete AI visibility toolkit for WordPress. Monitor 60+ AI crawlers, control access to your content, and optimize how AI systems discover and understand your site. What does VigIA do? Scores your AI visibility with a 100-point analyzer covering 20 checks across 5 categories Tracks AI crawlers visiting your site (GPTBot, ClaudeBot, PerplexityBot, and 60+ others) Provides detailed analytics with advanced filters, server-side pagination, and exportable reports with metadata banner Blocks unwanted crawlers via PHP (403 response) Manages robots.txt rules for AI crawlers with compliance monitoring Sends email alerts about crawler activity (daily, weekly, or monthly) Generates llms.txt files to help AI systems understand your site Serves markdown endpoints for posts, pages, taxonomy archives (categories, tags, WooCommerce product categories, custom taxonomies) and WooCommerce products with schema-like data Generates JSON-LD structured data with Site Identity and AI Discovery signals Exposes abilities for AI agents and automation tools (WordPress 6.9+) Key Features AI Visibility Analyzer * 100-point scoring system with letter grades (A+ to F) * 20 individual checks across 5 categories * Access & AI Discovery (37 pts): robots.txt, AI bot directives, Content Signals, llms.txt, sitemap, RSS feed * Structured Data & Semantic Context (25 pts): JSON-LD schemas, Open Graph, Twitter Cards, meta description, canonical URL * Content Structure & Readability (20 pts): heading hierarchy, semantic HTML5, image alt text, content/HTML ratio * AI Interaction & Distribution (8 pts): markdown delivery, AI share buttons * Access Performance (10 pts): TTFB measurement * Smart recommendations with direct links to VigIA features and plugin suggestions * Analyze any page on your site with URL autocomplete selector * Results cached for 24 hours with manual re-analyze option Analytics Dashboard * Total visits, unique crawlers, and pages crawled statistics * Timeline chart with daily breakdown * Category distribution (AI Training, AI Search, AI Assistant, Data Scraper) * Top crawlers and most crawled pages tables with paginated navigation * Share Buttons & AI-powered Summaries integration: see share button clicks per page * Recent activity log with content type and HTTP status columns (color coded by status family) * Advanced filters: multi-select crawler picker, content type, HTTP status code, and configurable date range * Server-side pagination with four-button pager (first, previous, next, last) — operates over the full database, not just the latest 500 rows * Period comparison functionality * CSV export with a metadata banner (site name, site URL, export type, date range, export timestamp, applied filters) * “Export filtered CSV” button that downloads exactly what the active filters return, with vigia-filtered-YYYY-MM-DD.csv filename * Content type detection distinguishes Home, Post, Page, Product, custom CPTs, Category archive, Tag archive, Date/Author archive, Feed, Sitemap, REST API, File, Admin / login attempts (/wp-admin, /wp-login.php), WordPress system (admin-ajax, xmlrpc, wp-cron, wp-comments-post), 404 Not found, and Other Crawler Blocking * Block crawlers via PHP with 403 Forbidden response * Quick block dropdown in analytics dashboard * Manage blocks from Extras page * Works on any server (Apache, Nginx, LiteSpeed, etc.) Robots.txt Management * Add Disallow rules for AI crawlers * Visual preview of your robots.txt * Compliance monitoring: see which crawlers ignore your rules * One-click blocking for non-compliant crawlers * Works with both physical and virtual robots.txt Email Alerts * Daily, weekly, or monthly reports * Three detail levels: Minimal, Normal, Complete * Non-compliant crawler warnings * Activity comparison with previous period Markdown for Agents * Serve posts, pages and any public post type as optimized markdown for AI agents * Serve taxonomy archive pages (categories, tags, WooCommerce product categories, custom taxonomies) as markdown — disabled by default, opt in per taxonomy * Dedicated .md URL endpoints (e.g., /your-post.md, /category/news.md, /product-category/electronics.md) * Accept: text/markdown content negotiation on posts and taxonomy archive pages * Discoverability via Link HTTP headers and HTML tags * YAML frontmatter for posts: title, date, modified, author, image, categories, tags, post type, lang * YAML frontmatter for taxonomy terms: title, description, url, type, taxonomy, parent, count, image (term meta), lang * WooCommerce product frontmatter adds schema-like fields: sku, product_type, price, regular_price, sale_price, currency, availability, stock_quantity, rating, rating_count, review_count * Taxonomy term body includes the term description (rendered through the_content), the list of direct child terms in hierarchical taxonomies, and an excerpt of the latest posts/products assigned to the term * Product listings inside product_cat archives include an inline summary with formatted price, “was X” on sale items, star rating and out-of-stock flag * Respects blocking rules (blocked crawlers get 403) and LLMs.txt exclusion filters * Per-term noindex detection from Yoast SEO, Rank Math, All in One SEO and SEOPress * Analytics integration: tracks markdown requests per crawler * X-Markdown-Tokens response header * Filters: vigia_markdown_post_eligible, vigia_markdown_term_eligible, vigia_markdown_term_posts_limit * Follows the Cloudflare Markdown for Agents standard LLMs.txt Generator * Select content by post type with one click * Filter by taxonomies (categories, tags, custom) * Manual include/exclude with AJAX search * Exclude by URL patterns (wildcards supported) * SEO plugin integration (auto-exclude noindex content) * Auto-regeneration (daily, weekly, monthly) * Robots.txt integration (add llms.txt and llms-full.txt references) * Generate llms.txt and llms-full.txt files * Full content or excerpt mode * Compatible with Yoast SEO, Rank Math, All in One SEO, SEOPress, The SEO Framework, and Native SEO NoIndexer JSON-LD Structured Data * Generate WebSite and Organization/Person schema for site identity * AI Discovery: ReadAction pointers to llms.txt, llms-full.txt, and Markdown for Agents endpoints * Social profiles and sameAs links for brand identity across the web * SearchAction for Google sitelinks search box * Media library integration for logo selection * SEO plugin conflict detection (Yoast, Rank Math, AIOSEO, SEOPress, The SEO Framework) * Choose output page (front page or any published page) * Live JSON-LD preview with real-time updates * Smart integration with LLMs.txt and Markdown for Agents features Supported AI Crawlers VigIA monitors 60+ AI crawlers including: OpenAI: GPTBot, OAI-SearchBot, OAI-AdsBot, ChatGPT-User Anthropic: ClaudeBot, Claude-SearchBot, Claude-User, Claude-Code Google: Google-Extended, GoogleOther, Gemini-Deep-Research, Google-NotebookLM Perplexity: PerplexityBot, Perplexity-User Meta: Meta-ExternalAgent, FacebookBot, Meta-WebIndexer Amazon: Amazonbot, Amzn-SearchBot, bedrockbot Mistral: MistralAI-User, MistralAI-Index Microsoft: BingBot ByteDance: Bytespider Apple: Applebot-Extended And many more… Privacy Focused VigIA stores visitor data locally in your WordPress database. No data is sent to external servers. Abilities API VigIA is one of the first WordPress plugins to implement the Abilities API introduced in WordPress 6.9. This API allows AI agents, automation tools, and external systems to discover and interact with VigIA’s functionality in a standardized, secure way. What are Abilities? Abilities are self-contained units of functionality that VigIA exposes through WordPress’s central registry. Each ability has defined inputs, outputs, and permissions, making it easy for automation tools to understand and use them. Available Abilities VigIA registers the following abilities: Analytics vigia/get-crawler-stats – Get statistics about AI crawler visits (total visits, unique crawlers, pages crawled) vigia/get-top-crawlers – Get a ranked list of most active AI crawlers vigia/get-top-pages – Get the most crawled pages on your site Blocking vigia/get-blocked-items – List all blocked crawlers and IP addresses vigia/block-crawler – Block a crawler by User-Agent pattern vigia/unblock-crawler – Remove an existing block Robots.txt vigia/get-robots-rules – Get current AI crawler rules in robots.txt vigia/add-robots-disallow – Add a Disallow directive for a crawler vigia/remove-robots-rule – Remove a robots.txt rule Use Cases Automated monitoring: AI agents can query crawler statistics and alert you to anomalies Reactive blocking: Automation tools can block crawlers that repeatedly ignore robots.txt External dashboards: Aggregate data from multiple WordPress sites with VigIA installed WP-CLI integration: Future command-line access through the Abilities API n8n / Make workflows: Build custom automation flows using VigIA’s abilities Requirements The Abilities API ships with WordPress 6.9 and later. On older WordPress versions, VigIA works normally but abilities and MCP are not available. MCP Server (Model Context Protocol) VigIA exposes its 9 abilities as native MCP tools to any MCP-compatible client (Claude Code, Cursor, Claude Desktop, Codex CLI, Antigravity, Continue, Cline, Zed and similar) using the official WordPress MCP Adapter. The adapter ships bundled with the plugin, so the MCP endpoint is active right after installation — no Composer step or terminal access required. Requirements WordPress 6.9 or later (provides the Abilities API) Quick connect (recommended) Open VigIA > Extras > MCP and click “Generate password and connection commands”. The plugin creates a dedicated Application Password named VigIA MCP and renders ready-to-paste commands for Claude Code, Cursor, Claude Desktop and a generic block (URL + Authorization header) for any other MCP client. The plain password is shown only once. If you lose it, revoke the entry from the same panel and generate a new one. Endpoint https://your-site.example/wp-json/vigia/v1/mcp The endpoint uses HTTP Basic auth with the WordPress Application Password. The user must have the manage_options capability. Connecting Claude Code Quick Connect builds the full command for you. The shape is: claude mcp add --transport http vigia https://your-site.example/wp-json/vigia/v1/mcp --header "Authorization: Basic BASE64_OF_USER_AND_APP_PASSWORD" Claude Code merges the new entry into its config file automatically — no risk of breaking other servers. Connecting Cursor Save the JSON block from Quick Connect as ~/.cursor/mcp.json. You can also reach this file from inside Cursor at Settings → Cursor Settings → MCP. If the file already exists with other content, see the FAQ. Claude Desktop and other clients Claude Desktop does not speak HTTP MCP, so it needs a small bridge and a config file of its own. Any other client (Codex CLI, Continue, Cline, Antigravity, Zed, or your own) takes the two raw values Quick Connect exposes: the server URL and the Authorization header. Both cases are covered in the FAQ, together with how to merge VigIA into a config file that already exists without losing what is in it. Read-only mode If you only want your AI to consult VigIA (not change anything), enable “Read-only mode” in the MCP tab. While on, write actions (block, unblock, robots changes) return a permission denied error. Read actions (statistics, top crawlers, blocked items, robots rules) keep working. The toggle stores a vigia_mcp_read_only option that hooks into the vigia_can_write_via_abilities filter. Developers can still force read-only from a mu-plugin: add_filter( 'vigia_can_write_via_abilities', '__return_false' ); The mu-plugin filter at the default priority takes precedence over the toggle. Who can reach the endpoint The endpoint requires the capability to manage options, the same one every tool behind it already asked for. The vigia_mcp_transport_capability filter can lower that bar; each tool keeps its own permission check. After connecting Restart your MCP client after adding the server so it picks up the new tools. Then try a few prompts to confirm everything is wired up: “Show me VigIA crawler stats for the last 7 days.” “List the top 5 most crawled pages on this site.” “Add a robots.txt Disallow rule for TestBot and then list the current AI crawler rules.” The third example exercises a read + write + read round-trip, which is the most complete sanity check. Support Need private support or custom development? Do you need one-on-one help, priority troubleshooting, or a custom feature, integration, or tweak built specifically for your site? I offer private support and custom development. Just contact me and tell me what you need. Need help or have suggestions? Official website WordPress support forum YouTube channel Documentation and tutorials Love the plugin? Please leave us a 5-star review and help spread the word! About AyudaWP We are specialists in WordPress security, SEO, AI and performance optimization plugins. We create tools that solve real problems for WordPress site owners while maintaining the highest coding standards and accessibility requirements.