Podcast E648 – AI Plugin Review #1: NovaMira  🔗 **Source:** [Podcast E648 – AI Plugin Review #1: NovaMira](https://share.snipd.com/episode/bd9409a9-f78a-4573-a0d0-e8ad65592707) ## Highlights - **WordPress 7.1 Beta 3 Improves Styling And Media** - WordPress 7.1 Beta 3 adds finer style controls and fixes media upload bugs that previously caused long GIF uploads to hang and rotated images to render incorrectly. - These fixes improve editor reliability and image handling for larger or EXIF-rotated media uploads. Transcript: Adam Silver Only one thing to talk about here, and that is WordPress 7.1 Beta 3 was released. Apparently, more than 71 issues were addressed since Beta 1. And Beta 3 also introduces two improvements to styling. One of them is applying local style changes globally is no longer an all or nothing action. The apply globally option in the block inspector now opens a quick review step, allowing you to choose which modified styles to apply globally while keeping the rest as local overrides. Okay, a lot of words there, but I'm sure it makes sense to some of you. And the other one is a notable fix that includes improvements to media uploads, long animated GIF uploads no longer hang, images rotated using EXIF metadata are processed now correctly. So that's cool. Always good to have things in the EXIF metadata to not go wonky there. ([Time 0:01:42](https://share.snipd.com/snip/f8c2d8fa-5412-40d0-8605-8c04228a8615)) - **NovaMira Makes WordPress An MCP Server** - NovaMira is a WordPress plugin that turns a site into an MCP server so AI agents (Claude, Codex, Cursor) can inspect and change the site, not just suggest content. - That allows agents to run code, edit files, and perform site management with proper permissions. Transcript: Adam Silver Different ways of doing this. But this week, I'm going to start with NovaMira. It's a plugin. And after I heard about this from my friend and yours, Marcus Burnett, and he's using it for a lot of his projects. He's all in on it for a lot of things. So what is NovaMira? Well, loosely put, it's a WordPress plugin that turns your website into an MCP server, creating a direct bridge between WordPress and AI tools like Claude, Codex, Cursor. That means an AI agent can do more than just simply suggest content or write code with the right permissions. It can actually inspect, manage, troubleshoot, and make changes to the WordPress site itself. ([Time 0:04:03](https://share.snipd.com/snip/69c7d66d-e5ce-493f-8755-1a8175fb75ab)) - **Only Enable AI Abilities On Safe Environments** - Enable AI abilities only on development or staging environments and keep backups because agents can execute PHP and perform file system operations. - Use capable AI models and require confirmation before each action to limit risk. Transcript: Adam Silver Okay. So the configuration, the first thing you have to do is enable the AI abilities. There's a checkbox. Yes, you want to do this, of course. Otherwise, why am I installing it? There's a note there. I call it a red note. Security note. It says, when enabled, AI agents can execute PHP code and perform file system operations on this site. For development and staging environments only. Always keep backups. Use NovaMira with capable AI models and set your client to ask for confirmation before every action. Read what the agent is about to do before approving. ([Time 0:05:18](https://share.snipd.com/snip/c92fcbec-64b2-4ed8-9e08-aad50f74216a)) - **Connecting Codex Took 90 Seconds On A Local Site** - Adam chose application passwords locally and connected Codex, pasting the provided prompt into his Codex project to auto-configure the MCP entry. - In about 90 seconds the plugin modified local config (toml file) and exposed discoverable tool abilities. Transcript: Adam Silver You have a choice of OAuth versus application password. I went with the application password because it just seemed easier for me. I didn't want to use any other service. I'm running locally. It just made sense. Did that. And then I was given the chance to connect to the AI client of choice. And there are a whole bunch of choices here. Some I had never heard of, like half of them. They were, I'm going to read them to you real quick. Claude Code, Claude Desktop, Codex, Antigravity, Cursor, VS Code, GitHub, Copilot, Windsor, Klein, Gemini CLI, 2Code, Amazon Q, Zed, Kilo Code, and OpenCode. And honestly, I believe one, like I said, half of those I've never heard of, which could be more podcast episodes about testing those out in the future. I'm a Codex guy, so I went ahead and chose Codex. And then I connected it with the just clicking that button from there i went to my codex application and i created a new project and then i pasted the provided prompt that was given to paste Into the prompt if you will and then from there i was given information back telling me that, quote, I'll add the Nova Mira local host MCP entry using only three specified environment Variables and the exact NPX arguments. ([Time 0:06:00](https://share.snipd.com/snip/1413746d-30a6-4c93-aef8-458002f5ee74)) - **Plugin Exposes Broad Site Control With Read Only Default** - NovaMira exposes powerful abilities: read/write files, run WP-CLI, execute PHP, edit Gutenberg, and manage reusable skills while promising read-only behavior until told to change. - It suggests starting with a read-only site audit to understand capabilities safely. Transcript: Adam Silver And the answer, because I wasn't quite sure how this was really going to work, honestly. I was kind of just shooting in the dark here. And the answer I came back with was, you can now ask me to inspect, manage, develop, and redesign the local WordPress site directly. Examples could be audit this WordPress site and report problems without changing anything. List all pages, posts, plugins, themes, and users. Inspect the active theme and explain how it works. Read or edit a specific site file. It was pretty interesting. So they gave me, I think, like a dozen things I could do with it. It also was clear and honest about itself, saying that it clearly exposed the capabilities to read, write, and edit and delete files. It can run WPCLI commands. It can execute PHP inside of WordPress. It can read and edit Gutenberg content, creating pages through Gutenberg finalized queue. It can manage reusable NovaMira skills. It told me what it could do as well. It also gave me an important note saying, this connection provides essentially unrestricted control of the entire installation. I'll treat read-only requests as read-only and won't make changes until you ask. And then it gave me a suggestion. Maybe a good first request would be inspect the Nova Mirror WordPress site and give me a read-only overview of its pages, theme, plugins, configuration, and site health. ([Time 0:08:18](https://share.snipd.com/snip/d6311a4d-b322-4ec6-860d-b29d6771b263)) - **Skills Design And Sandbox Shape AI Output** - NovaMira uses skills, design briefs, and a sandbox folder: skills drive automations, design enforces site-wide visual rules, and sandbox stores generated files until you decide where to move them. - Moving sandbox code into persistent plugins/snippet managers prevents breakage if NovaMira is disabled. Transcript: Adam Silver It came with four custom built-in skills, one for Gutenberg, Edit Content, Nova Mira Design, and Skill Creator. And from there, you can also upload.md files, md is markdown, or you can add some manually, which of course, it suggests that you you ask ai to help create the skill itself so it's very Meta there the design tab looks similar to the skills but from a design perspective your site has one design direction the active design this is from itself the active design your ai Builds within it's created for the site from the brief not picking from a catalog. On every page, the AI also enforces a floor of anti-slop rules. So I'm guessing what this is, technically speaking, is that you tell it what you want to look like. You give it the fonts, you give it the weights, you give it the colors, and it will abide by that. You can also import a design.md file, just like you can in skills, in context. In the sandbox setting, it said no sandbox files yet. And it also said AI agents will place generated files here. So I googled that. I was curious, what's that mean? And it said, I got some information back that said, this is where NovaMirror might build something and where it keeps it, but it can also move it out from there. And in more research, what that means is if you had it write a snippet, it could leave it there. ([Time 0:10:07](https://share.snipd.com/snip/ee84ee3c-fa34-476d-a9ae-87743e4f28e2)) - **Asked NovaMira To Create Pages And Reassign Categories** - Adam asked Codex to create half a dozen running-related pages with featured images, then to add a matching category and remove 'uncategorized' from posts. - NovaMira executed each request successfully, demonstrating end-to-end content creation and site updates. Transcript: Adam Silver And it did that. And it did it really fast this time around. And then I said, okay, now after that, I didn't want it to be uncategorized. So create a new category that matches the content and assign it to that. And I did that. And that took a little bit longer. And then I went back one more time and it said now remove the uncategorized from all published posts. And it did that as well. So I can see how this works. ([Time 0:13:05](https://share.snipd.com/snip/1b9ee96f-81bc-4245-981c-7b7c61e3053e)) - **Best Fit For Standardized Multi Site Workflows** - NovaMira adds overhead compared with using Codex directly, but shines when you need standardized changes across many sites because it connects MC P, AI client, and WordPress into one workflow. - Use cases include bulk updates like changing headlines across dozens of sites. Transcript: Adam Silver I'm curious about why to use this here. Because honestly, in my situation, my work use case study, way I'm going to word this, is it seems a little slow, maybe redundant. And I'm thinking, can I just do this with codex by itself? And yeah, obviously, I can because I have been doing it. But I can see that codex actually, it is faster for me to use codex right now directly, but to a point only to a certain thing. There is a limitation of what I can do. There's overhead the way I'm doing it right now. Codex, MCP, Novamira, WordPress, database. It's faster to just take out the MCP piece, right? It just is. ([Time 0:14:40](https://share.snipd.com/snip/2d15957b-180a-4497-b00a-3d780ed0fccc))