The viewer’s question about giving access to an AI
An unclear picture of your plugin stack is one of the most common things that quietly causes problems over time. Plugins are the largest attack surface when it comes to WordPress. You can read our deep dive in why that is, the new threats of 2026, and how to protect your site in our blog about WordPress plugin security.
That’s why leaving your plugins not updated leaves your site exposed. But how do you keep track of them all when you are running multiple sites? That’s what our viewer wanted to know about:
How can I safely give access to an account to AI for some assistance? For example, I want AI to create a spreadsheet of all the plugins used on my sites. The information could be drawn from my SolidWP Central account. Could I give access to AI to review all plugins per site there and make it a chart?
Nathan Ingram, the host and agency coach here at hosting.com, explained his method of doing what the customer was asking about:
The easiest way to do that is just use the Claude Chrome extension. Set up the extension in Chrome, log in and connect it to your Claude account, and it will let Claude view what's in your browser. That way you don't have to give it any login information.
Simple enough. But this wouldn’t be an Office Hours Q&A blog post if we don’t elaborate on Nathan’s explanation.
What you need before you start
Our viewer mentioned SolidWP Central in their question, which was rebranded to Kadence Central. It’s a great tool that lets you see every plugin installed on your sites from a single login. You can see their versions, active status, and if they need an update.
That’s the precise data you want. The question is how to get in front of an AI, though, without manually typing or copying and pasting the data. Or, even worse, sharing your login credentials with it.
Nathan’s approach works best with Solid Central or any other similar tool that acts as a hub for your websites. If you aren’t using such a plugin, though, don’t worry. There are still ways to do this, and we’ll cover them later in the blog.
The simplest method: Claude for Chrome
The Claude extension for Chrome is not just the most straightforward way to do this, it’s the safest, too. It allows Claude to see what’s on your screen, the same way you do, and you don’t need to export anything or grant any special access to your account.
Here’s what you need to do:
Install the Claude for Chrome extension and connect it to your Claude account.
Log into your site management dashboard as you usually do in the same browser.
Navigate to the plugin overview for your sites.
Open the Claude side panel and tell it what you want it to do. For example, you can ask it to look at the plugin data on the page and build a table showing site name, plugin name, version, and whether an update is available.
Claude will go through the page and give you a structured breakdown you copy in a spreadsheet or refer to directly.
As you can see, the most important point here is that you aren’t giving your username/email and password to Claude during any step of the process. We highly advise you to never share any login details with any LLM whatsoever.
Instead, you just let Claude see what you are seeing or, if you’d like to go a bit further with it, you can also have Claude navigate for you, while having logged in prior to asking it to do anything. That part’s vital. As Nathan puts it:
You just log in and then tell it to open a tab to this URL, the logged-in view of your dashboard, and it can go in there, it can click things, it can scrape the text and make a chart, whatever you want it to do.
It is vital to note, however, that while the LLM will only see what’s on your screen, the dashboard will still contain site names, URLs, and other details. Just be mindful of that if you plan on sharing that information with anyone or are working in a team. We even recommend using a dedicated browser profile is a tidy habit if you want the extra separation.
Other ways to get plugin data to AI
While the Chrome extension will be the smoothest method for many people, there are other alternatives if you prefer not to use it or would rather not show AI the dashboard directly.
CSV export: Some website management dashboards let you export plugin data as a CSV file. If yours does, download it, upload it directly to your LLM of choice, and ask it to analyze or reformat the data in any way you need. No browser access required.
Copy and paste: For a smaller number of sites, copying the plugin list from your sites and pasting it into an AI chat is a simple way that works with any tool. It’s not a very elegant method, but modern LLMs are fully capable of reading through any bad formatting that may have carried over. It works if you don’t have many sites to manage.
Site by site: Finally, if you aren’t using a centralized dashboard tool at all, you can still use an AI to audit your plugins, you just have to screenshot or copy and paste the plugin list manually for each site. It will take you longer, but the output will be just as useful.
Regardless of which method you choose to use, you will always get the information you requested. The AI doesn’t really care how you got the information you are giving it; it will work with it either way.
What should you do with the data?
Once Claude, or your LLM of choice, has the data, you can ask it to do more than just list what’s there. There are countless things the AI can do with the data, but in our experience, these are some of the most useful ones:
Clean overview: A simple table with site name, plugin name, version, active status, and update status can organize otherwise confusing data into a scannable and easy to read format. We’ve noticed that once the data is laid out like that, it gives surprising clarity to what needs attention.
Flag anything stale: Use the AI to flag any plugins that haven’t been updated in the last six months. While not a reason to immediately remove them, it’s worth investigating if they are still being maintained. Unmaintained plugins are one of the first things we look at when a site has been compromised.
Spot overlap: We highly recommend using one plugin for one task. Plugins doing the same thing can cause conflicts and even critical errors. AI can spot such things and offer solutions. One of the most common overlaps we’ve noticed is too many caching plugins, which are usually a sign of the site being passed on to someone else.
Forgotten installs: Your AI helper can also flag any plugins that are inactive. They aren’t inherently a problem, but if you haven’t touched them in a long time then they are worth a second look. We always recommend doing a bit of housekeeping and removing anything you don’t need, to keep your WordPress installation tidy.
These four things should be more than enough to get your plugins in order, regardless of the number of sites you are running.
Of course, there are even more things AI can help you with here, like offering alternate or complementary plugins (and even themes), optimal configurations, and so on. Realistically, if you have doubts about your sites’ plugins, an LLM nowadays can offer some decent advice.
Simplify your plugin audits
For most people, remembering to perform a plugin audit is harder than the audit itself. However, once you’ve run through the process we described once you’ll not only see how quickly it goes, but you’ll also have a clear baseline of the status of your plugins.
From here, it’s worth turning this into a habit or a part of your maintenance routine. A quarterly check-up works for most people and is frequent enough to catch anything that’s drifted, but it’s not often enough to feel like a chore. The only exception is ahead of major WordPress releases since that’s when plugin compatibility issues tend to surface.
The method, however, doesn’t change: open Claude, ask for the same breakdown you got last time, and compare. If you see a stale or unfamiliar plugin, you’ll catch it before it becomes a problem.
If you have questions about this or anything else related to WordPress, hosting, or working with AI tools in your workflow, join us for Office Hours with Nathan Ingram—every Thursday at 2 p.m. EST.
FAQ
Is it safe to give AI access to my WordPress dashboard?
It can be safe if you use strict access controls. Full administrative privileges without guard rails carries significant risks.
With the method described in this post, you aren't giving AI access to your dashboard directly. Instead, you're letting it read what's already on your screen while you're logged in. No credentials are shared at any point.
No. A tool like Solid Central makes the process faster since all your plugin data is visible in one place, but it isn't a requirement. You can get the same results by going through your sites individually and feeding the data to an AI tool via screenshot, copy and paste, or CSV export if your setup supports it.
How often should I audit my plugins?
A quarterly check works well for most people. It’s frequent enough to catch anything that's drifted without becoming a burden. It's also worth running one ahead of major WordPress releases, since that's when plugin compatibility issues are most likely to surface.
Can AI recommend plugin replacements, not just flag problems?
Yes. Once it has your plugin data, you can ask an LLM to suggest alternatives to plugins that are unmaintained, flag ones with known overlap, or recommend complementary tools based on what you're already running. The audit is a useful starting point, but it's far from the only thing you can do with the data.
