On a WordPress site that has been running for years, the content jobs pile up. Refresh the excerpt on 400 posts. Fill missing alt text across the media library. Push a rebrand through hundreds of posts and pages. By hand it means opening every record one at a time, and the AI built into WordPress stops reading after a few hundred posts, so it never sees the whole site. The alternative is worse: a blind bulk write across hundreds of posts that you cannot review before it goes live.
Scratch pulls your posts, pages, and custom post types down to files on your computer, one file per record. Your AI rewrites every record, not the first few hundred, and about 10x faster than it works over an API because it reads the files directly instead of making a call per record. Every change comes back as a word-level diff next to the original, and nothing reaches your live site until you approve it. The same loop cleans up content here and CRM records in Scratch's sibling use case.
Scratch is the companion app to Whalesync: Whalesync keeps your site in sync with the rest of your tools, and Scratch is where you wrangle the content into shape first.
What Scratch edits in WordPress
- Post and page bodies (block content preserved as raw)
- Titles, slugs, excerpts, and publication status
- Custom post types and taxonomies (auto-discovered)
- Advanced Custom Fields (ACF), exposed as top-level columns
- Image alt text across the media library
- Categories and tags
How it works
- Scratch pulls your content into files. Posts, pages, and any custom post types come down to a local folder, one file per record, with block content preserved as raw and ACF fields exposed as top-level columns. Nothing touches your live site.
- Your AI rewrites the fields you point it at. Open the folder in the agent you already use. Try a prompt on one post, then let it run across the whole site. Rewrite every excerpt and fix the title case. It edits bodies, titles, slugs, excerpts, taxonomies, ACF fields, and alt text in the files, never the live site.
- You review every diff and publish. In the Scratch desktop app, each changed field shows next to the original, word by word. Approve what ships, and Scratch publishes only the records you approved back through the REST API. Templates and template parts (
wp_template,wp_template_part) are excluded from edits, and postmetais hidden in the default view to keep accidental writes out of plugin-owned SEO fields.
What teams use it for
- Refresh titles and excerpts across hundreds of posts in one pass.
- Fill missing alt text across the whole media library.
- Push a rebrand or product rename through every post and page.
- Normalize categories and tags so archives and navigation stay clean.
- Rewrite custom post type content (products, listings, docs) in bulk.
- Tidy ACF field values that drifted across teams and authors.
Why not let AI write straight to WordPress?
A direct API write or an MCP server hands the AI the publish button straight to your live site. There is no diff, no review queue, no rollback. One confident pass rewrites every post and ships it, a blind bulk write across hundreds of records at once, and by the time you spot the wrong tone or the wrong fact it is already live and the original is often gone. With plugin-owned SEO fields and custom post types in the mix, a single bad write can touch far more than the body you meant to change. It is also the slow path, because every post is a separate API call.
Scratch gives the AI the same full read and write access, but against a local copy of your content. Scratch pulls the publish step out and hands it to you. The AI can change anything, only you can ship it, and every published record is reversible per record.
What's safe, and what's locked
Templates and template parts (wp_template, wp_template_part) are excluded from edits, and post meta is hidden in the default view to keep accidental writes out of plugin-owned SEO fields. You bring your own AI: Scratch holds no AI credentials and runs no model, so you sign into Claude, Claude Code, Codex, Cursor, Copilot, Cline, or Windsurf the way you already do. Nothing leaves your computer until you publish, and every published change is reversible per record. Optional Python validators check length, required fields, and any rule you set before anything reaches you for review, so a bad edit is easy to catch in the diff.
See WordPress connected to your AI agent
Questions WordPress users ask
Will anything change on my live site before I approve it?
No. Your AI only edits local files. Nothing reaches WordPress until you have seen the change as a word-level diff in the Scratch desktop app and approved it. Scratch then publishes only the records you approved back through the REST API.
Does it preserve my block content and custom fields?
Yes. Block content is preserved as raw, so the editor reads it back cleanly, and Advanced Custom Fields are exposed as top-level columns the AI can edit. Custom post types and taxonomies are auto-discovered and come down as files too.
Will it touch my templates or plugin SEO fields?
No. Templates and template parts (wp_template and wp_template_part) are excluded from edits, and post meta is hidden in the default view to keep accidental writes out of plugin-owned SEO fields. You can edit bodies, titles, slugs, excerpts, taxonomies, ACF fields, and alt text without risking those.
If a published change is wrong, can I undo it?
Yes. Every published change is reversible per record. The original stays next to the rewrite until you decide which one stays, so a blind bulk write is never a one-way door.
See it on your own WordPress site
The fastest way to trust it is to watch it run on your content. Book a 30-minute demo on your site, or try Scratch free and run the first pass yourself.