MCP for Page Protector is a free add-on for MCP for J that lets your AI client run Page Protector, the extension that puts a proof-of-work check in front of the pages and modules you choose. Its 15 tools show Page Protector's status, change its settings, choose what's protected, manage the IP allow-list, reset passes and read the event log. They call Page Protector's own code, so what your AI client reports is exactly what the dashboard and the gatekeeper plugin decide.
Why this exists
Once Page Protector is set up, the questions are ongoing: who is hitting the challenge most?, is that a scraper or a customer?, let our office through, protect the new pricing page too. Each of those is a trip into the dashboard, the event log or the Options screen. With this add-on you just ask, and the answer comes from the same checks the dashboard shows.
What Claude can do
There are 15 tools, grouped the way you'd reach for them.
| Area | Tools | What you can do |
|---|---|---|
| Status | 1 | The dashboard's own health checks: whether the gatekeeper plugin is running, whether the captcha can run and what visitors see right now, what's protected, Cloudflare, logging and page cache. |
| Settings | 2 | Read every option, with menu items, modules and user groups shown by name, and change options with a dry run first. |
| Pages and modules | 4 | Add or remove protected menu items, and add or remove protected modules by id or by position. |
| IP allow-list | 2 | Add or remove exempt addresses and ranges, IPv4 or IPv6. |
| Passes | 1 | Reset every visitor's pass, the dashboard's "Reset all passes". |
| Event log | 5 | Stats, the event list with the Event Log's filters, the top IP addresses with a likely-scraper flag, and deleting or clearing log entries. |
Installing it
You'll need Joomla 5 or 6, PHP 8.2 or later, MCP for J, and Page Protector 0.2.0 or later, which is free. The add-on was built against Page Protector 0.2.1.
- Open Components โ MCP for J โ Browse MCP Add-Ons and click Install on this add-on. You can also download the ZIP above and install it through System โ Install โ Extensions.
- That's the whole install. The plugin switches itself on, and the tools show up in your AI client the next time it lists them.
If MCP for J isn't installed, the plugin installs switched off and tells you why, rather than leaving you with tools that go nowhere.
Using it
Start with "How is Page Protector doing?" That runs the dashboard's checks and tells you, in plain words, whether visitors are being challenged the way you expect. Then try "Who got challenged most this week, and do any of them look like scrapers?", "Let 203.0.113.0/24 through" or "Protect the Pricing page too".
Settings are saved the way Options โ Save saves them, so Page Protector's own after-save work still happens: shortening the IP addresses already in the log when IP shortening is on, and cleaning the page and module caches. Before anything is saved, menu items, modules, positions and user groups must exist, IP lists must parse, and values must fit the Options form. Switching to "every page except" needs an explicit confirmation, because it puts the check in front of your whole site.
Two things about Page Protector's allow-list are worth knowing:
- An entry Page Protector can't read is ignored without a word.
203.0.113.300or a/33range looks fine in the Options form and simply never matches. These tools refuse to save one and flag any that are already stored. - Commas are split before comments are removed. Commenting out a line such as
# 198.51.100.7, 198.51.100.0/24leaves the second range active. The tools flag it and refuse a comment that contains a comma.
Permissions and security
The tools use Page Protector's own permissions: View for reading, Write for deleting log entries, Options for changing settings, and Admin for resetting passes. It's checked for the person whose MCP connection makes the request, so your AI client can't do anything that person couldn't do in Page Protector's admin. Logged IP addresses are shown the way the admin shows them, with a note when they've been shortened to network addresses and the range to block at a firewall.
Why it's free
Page Protector is free, so this add-on is free too.
This is version 1.0.0. All 15 tools were driven end to end on Joomla 6.2.0 with PHP 8.3 against Page Protector 0.2.1, including the challenge appearing and disappearing on the front end, an allow-listed address getting through, a solved proof-of-work pass being accepted and then rejected after a pass reset, and protected modules showing their placeholder. "Every page except" mode was only tried as a dry run, and Joomla 5 hasn't been tried yet.
Open source
GPL-2.0-or-later, the same license as Joomla itself. Source lives on GitHub.
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