WP Editorial Assistant

A WordPress plugin that puts Claude-powered editorial tools directly in the post editor sidebar. Authors and editors can run headline analysis, excerpt analysis, and E-E-A-T evaluation without leaving WordPress — and apply individual suggestions with one click.

Built by Corey Brown.

Features

• Three editorial tools in the Gutenberg sidebar:
  • Headline analysis with suggested alternatives
  • Excerpt analysis with suggested alternatives
  • E-E-A-T (Experience, Expertise, Authoritativeness, Trustworthiness) review
• One-click apply for Claude's suggestions — replace the title, replace the excerpt, or rename a specific H2/H3 by exact match.
• Customizable prompts: bundled defaults work out of the box; override any tool's prompt by pointing at a public Gist URL (changes flow through with a short cache).
• Direct Anthropic API integration — your API key, your usage, your control.

Requirements

• WordPress 6.6 or newer
• PHP 7.4 or newer
• An Anthropic API key (console.anthropic.com)

What this plugin is (and isn't)

• Claude-only. This plugin talks directly to Anthropic's API. It does not currently support OpenAI, Gemini, or other providers.
• Standalone credentials. It stores its own Anthropic API key in WordPress options. It does not yet integrate with WordPress 7.0's shared Connectors / AI plugin credential system. (Planned for a future release.)
• Editorial-only. No image generation, no auto-writing whole posts, no autonomous publishing. The plugin analyzes what you've drafted and offers targeted, one-click suggestions.

Installation

1. Download or clone this repository into your wp-content/plugins/ directory:

   git clone https://github.com/coreyweb/wp-editorial-assistant.git
   

2. Activate WP Editorial Assistant from the Plugins screen.
3. Go to Settings → Editorial Assistant and paste your Anthropic API key.
4. Open any post — the panel appears in the editor's top-right star menu as "Editorial Assistant."

Usage

1. Open a post in the block editor.
2. Click the star icon (top-right) → Editorial Assistant.
3. Pick a tool (Headline / Excerpt / E-E-A-T) → click Run.
4. Review the analysis. Apply any suggestion with the labeled button — only that one change is made.

Customizing prompts (recommended)

The plugin ships with generic starter prompts in prompts/ so it works out of the box. They are intentionally neutral — fine for a quick test, but you will get dramatically better results by tailoring them to your site's voice, audience, and editorial standards.

The bundled prompts are a starting point, not a destination. Read them, decide what's missing for your publication (industry context, brand voice, audience sophistication, specific frameworks you use), and override them.

How to override

1. Open one of the bundled files in prompts/ and copy its contents.
2. Create a public Gist at gist.github.com, paste it in, and edit to fit your site.
3. Click the Raw button on your Gist and copy that URL.
4. Paste it into the matching field on Settings → Editorial Assistant and save.

You can override one, two, or all three prompts independently — any field left blank uses the bundled default.

Placeholders

Whatever you write, leave these placeholders intact — the plugin fills them in at runtime:

• [Insert H1] — post title
• [Insert Current H1] — same (alt phrasing)
• [Insert Post Title] — same
• [Insert Excerpt Text] — current excerpt (or "NONE — needs generation" if empty)
• [Insert First Paragraph] — first non-empty paragraph of the body
• [Insert Body Copy] / [Insert Body Copy / Markdown / HTML] — full post body
• [Insert if available] — comma-separated categories and tags

Apply-action format

Claude is asked to append a wpea-actions JSON block to its response describing which suggestions can be one-click applied. The plugin parses this block, hides it from the displayed analysis, and renders a button per action. If you write a custom prompt and want the same one-click apply UX, your output should still include this block.

Supported action types:

• set_title — replace the post title
• set_excerpt — replace the post excerpt
• replace_heading — match an H2/H3 by exact current text and replace it

Cost & model notes

Defaults to Claude Opus 4.7 for sharper editorial judgment. To reduce cost, change the model in settings to claude-sonnet-4-6. A typical E-E-A-T review on a 1,500-word post costs roughly 1–5¢ depending on model and post length.

License

MIT — see LICENSE.