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Yoast SEO Abilities

This documentation explains what the Abilities API is and how Yoast SEO integrates with it.

What is the Abilities API?​

Abilities API is a standardized way for plugins to expose what they can do, introduced in WordPress 6.9. It allows plugins to do so by providing:

  • A registry where plugins declare their capabilities/features/functionalities (also known as abilities) with structured input and output schemas.
  • A central REST discovery endpoint (/wp-json/wp-abilities/v1/abilities) where any client/plugin can list everything that's available.
  • A standardized execution endpoint (/run) to invoke any registered ability.
  • Permission checks for every ability, so access control is consistent.

Once an ability is registered, it is discoverable and executable from PHP, JavaScript, and the REST API. That way, AI agents (and other third-party systems) can use that ability for their purposes.

Yoast SEO Abilities​

Yoast SEO registers the following abilities:

  • Three read-only Analysis scores abilities that return the scores of its content analyses for the most recently modified posts:
    • the SEO analysis score
    • the readability analysis score
    • the inclusive language analysis score.
  • Two abilities Post's SEO data abilities for working with the SEO data of individual posts
    • one that reads a post's SEO data
    • one that updates it.

They can all be discovered at /wp-json/wp-abilities/v1/abilities?category=yoast-seo along with their most relevant information.

Annotations​

Every ability declares a set of behavior annotations in its meta.annotations. They are hints (primarily for AI agents and other MCP clients) describing how the ability behaves, so a client can reason about how risky it is to call:

  • Read-only – when true, the ability only reads data and never changes anything on your site.
  • Destructive – only meaningful when the ability is not read-only. When true, the ability may overwrite or remove existing data in a way that is not easily reversible; when false, any changes it makes are additive or reversible. When null, the ability makes no claim either way, so a client should treat it as potentially destructive.
  • Idempotent – only meaningful when the ability is not read-only. When true, calling the ability again with the same input has no further effect beyond the first call.

The annotations for each ability are listed on its documentation page: Analysis scores and Post's SEO data.

Use cases for the Yoast SEO Abilities​

AI agents​

Assuming that an AI agent is connected to a WordPress-enabled MCP site (details on how one can do that, in this helpful tutorial from the WP Core team) with Yoast SEO active, it can then discover the above abilities and answer questions like:

  • "Take a look at the latest posts of my website and give me a report of the analysis of their SEO scores. Do you see a clear pattern in the subjects of the best performing ones?"
  • "Do you see the readability of my recent content going upwards or downwards?"
  • "I want to know if I have content on my site that uses non-inclusive language. If there's indeed not inclusive language in my content, do you see a correlation between the subjects covered?"

Beyond reading analysis scores, the agent can also read and update the SEO data of individual posts, answering requests like:

  • "Show me the SEO settings for the post at https://example.com/homemade-sourdough-bread/. Is it set to be indexed?"
  • "Mark my post about sourdough bread as cornerstone content and set its canonical URL to https://example.com/sourdough/."
  • "Noindex the post with ID 42."
  • Or even a bulk fetch and update of posts: "Get me the SEO titles of all posts about hiking boots and noindex the ones without a custom SEO title"

That way, Yoast SEO exposes both the results of its analyses and the SEO data of individual posts to authenticated AI agents, enabling users to use AI capabilities to easily navigate through useful SEO data of their website and create reports, map out plans and perform SEO-related actions accordingly.

Third-party code​

AI agents are not the only consumers. Plugins and other integrations can call the same abilities directly through the WP REST API, without any AI in the loop, by sending requests to each ability's /run endpoint.

Because every ability declares structured input and output schemas, this gives integrators a reliable, versioned way to read a site's analysis scores and post SEO data, and to update that SEO data, in a predictable shape, rather than depending on Yoast SEO's internal storage.

Prerequisites​

  • WordPress 6.9 or higher.
  • Indexables should be enabled and fully built.