Umbraco just released the Developer MCP Server in Beta. Here's what that could mean for content management

I am not saying content management is dead.

Complex website redesigns and bulk content management still need traditional approaches. But daily content updates, performance checks, and routine publishing tasks? Those are becoming conversational.

With an MCP server, the right AI tools, and some know-how, content strategists can focus on the actual strategy rather than execution. Writers can concentrate on creativity instead of formatting and managers can make data-driven decisions with instant insights instead of quarterly audits.

At Cogworks, we have been experimenting with the Umbraco MCP Server and we love its capabilities so far.

MCP (Model Context Protocol) is an open standard introduced by Anthropic. 

It is essentially a bridge that gives AI agents and assistants direct access to work with your CMS. 

Instead of the tedious copy-paste dance between ChatGPT or Claude and your content management system, your AI systems can now interact directly with your content, understanding its structure, relationships, and rules.

For content teams, this is game-changing. 

You can focus on strategy, creativity, and the human elements of content while AI handles the repetitive, time-consuming tasks that eat up your day.

The Umbraco MCP Server started as a community project by Phil Whittaker and Matt Wise. 

The exciting news is that Umbraco has officially adopted the project and is moving it in-house, with Phil leading the charge.

The new official Umbraco MCP Server brings some cool enhancements:

• Granular control: New tool-level and collection-level controls mean you can customise what AI can access. This reduces context overload (making AI responses faster and more accurate), minimises security risks, and allows different AI configurations for different use cases.

• Expanded capabilities: Newly added tools mean give access to  document versioning, template development, and asset management. It understands not just your content, but your entire CMS ecosystem.

The move to become an official Umbraco product will mean enterprise-ready support, continuous development, and alignment with Umbraco’s product roadmap. The new version, built for Umbraco 16, brings enhanced capabilities we're now starting to explore.

As Umbraco Platinum Partners, we always aim to push boundaries, so as soon as it was available we began experimenting with the MCP server to explore what was possible.

We’ve been running MCP server proof-of-concepts using Claude Desktop and other applications, and the results have been pretty cool.

We asked Claude to write articles on various topics. 

But here’s where it gets interesting—it didn’t just spit out the copy. 

It analysed our site structure to find the optimal location, checked for the appropriate Umbraco block components to use, picked appropriate imagery, and applied relevant tags from our existing taxonomy. We could publish immediately or save as a draft, ready for review.

What traditionally requires a content creator to juggle multiple considerations simultaneously becomes a single conversational request.

Next, we tested out some common issues, including the nightmare of updating a product name or terminology across an entire section or site. 

We got Claude to search existing content, perform find/replace operations while applying things like correct casing, and publish the changes. We were then able to get a generated list of all changes made and any reasoning behind individual changes. What could typically take hours of careful manual work happened in minutes, with the AI understanding context to avoid unwanted changes. 

Success.

That last one is gold for content managers. Imagine getting a weekly report: “You have 23 articles that haven’t been updated in over a year. Based on their traffic and relevance to current campaigns, here are the top 5 you should review this week.”

No more content rot creeping up on you unexpectedly.

With recent discussions about MCP servers as potential attack vectors, security concerns are paramount. The official Umbraco MCP aims to address this head-on:

• It respects existing Umbraco permissions completely

• You have granular control over what tools are available

• API user restrictions ensure AI can only do what you explicitly allow

Let’s be clear: this technology is powerful but still evolving. At Cogworks, we’re developing security-conscious implementation strategies that give you the power of AI while maintaining enterprise-level security.

We’re currently testing with the new beta and Umbraco 16, exploring the expanded capabilities.

We aim to do more testing of integrating the MCP server capabilities with our growing ecosystem of automations. We want to check for the scalability and develop our own best practices for efficient and reliable intregrations.

We’ll be developing best practices for different industries. Each client’s content challenges are unique and we’re learning how to tailor AI assistance to match specific needs and workflows.

AI-powered content management isn’t coming – it may be early days but it's already here. 

Early adopters can gain significant advantages over competitors by increasing velocity, consistency, and quality of content production and management.

The question isn’t whether to adopt these technologies, but how to do so in a way that amplifies your team’s strengths.

Want to learn more about the technical details? Check out the official Umbraco MCP repository on GitHub and Umbraco's official announcement.