In January 2026, a small but focused group of Joomla contributors - Martin Kopp, Stefan Wendhausen, Niels Braczek, and David Jardin - came together for a discovery sprint to explore how the Joomla CMS could be enhanced with an MCP (Model Context Protocol) server.

The long term goal: make Joomla easier and more efficient to use for site owners by enabling seamless collaboration between Joomla and AI-powered tools.

Why MCP Matters for Joomla

The Joomla roadmap identifies usability and efficiency for site owners as a key challenge. MCP offers a promising solution. It is a protocol that allows AI agents to securely read resources and perform actions in external systems.

Applied to Joomla, an MCP server could empower administrators to:

• create categories, articles, and menus automatically from a sitemap or PDF
• generate SEO-optimized titles and meta descriptions in bulk
• apply extension updates across multiple sites
• build landing pages for upcoming product launches

Crucially, the MCP server is not envisioned as a “super admin only” feature. The initiative aims for a solution that is easy to set up, lightweight, and accessible to a broad range of users.

Key Architectural Decisions

During the sprint, we agreed on several important design principles. The MCP server should be integrated directly into the Joomla core rather than run as a standalone service. PHP was chosen as the implementation language to align with Joomla’s system requirements and avoid additional dependencies. That will create an MCP server that’s directly integrated with Joomla core, providing a straightforward user experience.

Communication is handled via an HTTP endpoint following the MCP “Streamable HTTP” transport standard. Authentication is initially based on MCP-specific tokens managed in the backend, with a generic Joomla OAuth server planned as a next step. 

The actual MCP abilities - tools, resources, and prompts - are implemented as plugins to ensure extensibility.

What Was Achieved

The discovery sprint resulted in a fully working proof of concept: A backend UI component was developed that allows administrators to create MCP client connections, generate authentication tokens, and configure clients accordingly. In parallel, a functional MCP web service endpoint was implemented. This endpoint validates incoming tokens, initializes the MCP server, registers all available abilities provided by plugins, and exposes them to connected clients. To demonstrate this architecture in action, an initial MCP plugin was created that can retrieve system information as a resource and purge the Joomla cache as a tool. From end to end, we successfully connected a client to the server and executed initialize, ping, resource, and tool calls, validating the overall approach.

What Comes Next

While the proof of concept is promising, we identified several areas for further work. The backend component needs cleanup, proper installation scripts, and automated tests to make it production-ready. 

On the authentication side, a generic OAuth server for Joomla is planned, including dedicated scopes for MCP and web services to simplify onboarding for clients such as the Claude desktop application. 

The MCP server implementation itself will be reviewed, including benchmarking the currently used package and potentially switching to an official reference implementation to reduce long-term maintenance effort. The code that registers MCP-related features offered by plugins and the need for MCP session support will also be reassessed.

A major focus for the next phase will be plugins. We plan to build a generic plugin that wraps existing Joomla web services, making it possible to expose CRUD (create, read, update, delete) operations for all entities (article, categories, users, fields, menu items etc) with minimal additional code. This includes defining the available fields and endpoints per entity type, as MCP as a standard very much relies on strict definitions of available fields. Additional plugins for non-CRUD tasks and generic documentation resources for AI agents are also on the roadmap.

Looking Ahead

This discovery sprint marks an exciting first step toward AI-assisted Joomla administration. By embracing MCP in a flexible, extensible, and Joomla-native way, the project opens up new possibilities for site owners, developers, and the wider ecosystem. The work is just beginning - and the future looks promising.