MCP for Template Creator CK is a Pro add-on for MCP for J that lets your AI client read and work on Template Creator CK templates. Thirty-six tools cover the template projects, the block tree and positions parsed out of the editor's canvas, per-block styles and CSS search, design tokens, responsive breakpoints, fonts, custom layouts, the generated files on disk, editor backups, and drift and health diagnostics. It ships no regenerate tool, and that's deliberate โ Template Creator CK builds a template in the browser, so nothing running on the server can trigger a rebuild. Every tool that writes to the project says so in its own response rather than letting you believe a change has gone live.
Why this exists
A Template Creator CK template exists twice, and the two copies are only reconciled when a human clicks Apply. There's the project โ a row in the database, which is what the editor loads and saves, and which nothing at front-end runtime ever reads. And there's the generated template โ ordinary files in templates/<name>/, which is what actually renders your site. Everything confusing about working on one of these templates comes from that split. Generation runs in the browser, reading the editor's live canvas out of the POST body rather than re-reading the project from the database, so there's no server-side way to trigger it. Reproducing it would mean reproducing the editor. This add-on gives your AI client a clear read of both halves, tells you which half each write lands in, and reports when they've drifted apart.
What Claude can do
Thirty-six tools, grouped roughly the way you'd reach for them.
| Area | Tools | What you can do |
|---|---|---|
| Template projects | 4 | List the projects, read one in full, update its metadata, and export a whole project. |
| Structure | 5 | The block tree parsed out of the editor canvas, a flat block list, the module positions, the responsive breakpoints, and the widgets in use. |
| Styles | 4 | What the project styles, one block's styling in full, a search across the stored CSS, and the design tokens extracted from it. |
| Page settings | 2 | Read and write the Page โ Settings panel โ Load Bootstrap, wrapper width, fixed or fluid, Font Awesome, analytics, hide-on-frontpage. |
| Fonts | 3 | List the font kits, read one, update its metadata. |
| Custom layouts | 2 | List and read the custom layouts attached to a template. |
| Generated output | 8 | The generated templates on disk: what's there, what state it's in, browse and read files, write one, write the regeneration-safe custom CSS, bump the cache-buster, and list the overrides the template installed. |
| Backups | 2 | Browse and read the snapshot Template Creator CK writes on every editor save. |
| Diagnostics | 3 | Component info, a drift check between project and generated output, and a health check that reports what regenerating would destroy. |
| Table access | 3 | A read-only, column-validated query over the component's own tables for the question no tool anticipated. |
The one CSS change that works immediately
If you want a styling change that's live now and survives the next regenerate, write it to css/custom.css. It's one of the few files the generator never overwrites, and there's a tool for exactly that.
Writing the file isn't enough on its own, though, and this is the trap worth knowing about. Template Creator CK links its stylesheets with a hardcoded version string minted at generate time and serves them with a thirty-day cache header, so a CSS edit stays invisible to anyone who has visited before until that string changes โ and only a regenerate changes it. Which you can't trigger from the server. So the custom-CSS tool bumps the cache-buster itself by default, and there's a standalone tool for doing it on its own. On Joomla 6 the only stylesheets still carrying that version string are the two you're allowed to edit anyway; the rest go through Joomla's asset manager.
Everything written to the project row behaves the other way round. It's inert until somebody opens the editor and clicks Apply, and every tool that writes there says so in its response rather than reporting a clean success that changes nothing visible.
Installing it
You'll need Joomla 5 or 6, PHP 8.2 or later, MCP for J, and Template Creator CK itself from template-creator.com.
- Subscribe above, or get this and every other Pro add-on with MCP for J Pro โ All Access.
- Download the ZIP and install it through System โ Install โ Extensions, or paste your download URL into Install from URL.
- That's the whole install. The plugin enables itself, and the tools show up in your connected AI client the next time it lists them.
There's no admin screen for this plugin, by design โ it adds tools to MCP for J rather than a place to click. It also ships its own template-file reader and writer, because Template Creator CK generates to the old templates/<name>/ path on every Joomla version, which MCP for J's normal template-file tools can't reach.
Using it
Ask for what you want in plain language. "What module positions does this template actually define?" parses them out of the canvas. "Find every rule touching the header background" searches the stored CSS instead of you scrolling the editor. "Add this brand colour override so it's live now" writes the regeneration-safe custom CSS and bumps the cache-buster so returning visitors see it.
Start with the drift check and the health check. Both are read-only, and between them they'll tell you whether the project and the live template have fallen out of step and what a regenerate would cost you.
Run the health check before you regenerate
Regeneration isn't a neutral operation. It wipes templates/<name>/images/, and it force-overwrites Template Creator CK's own com_content overrides โ the guards that would have prevented that are commented out in the shipped source. So anything you or a previous developer put in either place is gone the next time somebody clicks Apply. The health check and the override listing exist to tell you what's at risk while you still have the chance to move it.
A couple of the component's habits are worth knowing for the same reason. The published and ordering columns on a project are meaningless โ Template Creator CK blanks both on every editor save, so a perfectly healthy live template routinely shows as unpublished. That's why there's deliberately no publish tool here. And the Page Settings panel stores Load Bootstrap under a misspelled attribute name, in a place where that name isn't unique, so the obvious search-and-replace edits the wrong element and appears to do nothing at all. The page-settings tools handle both under sane names.
This one is still flagged experimental
Worth saying plainly, since you're being asked to pay for it. This add-on is listed as experimental in the MCP for J catalog and that badge is still on. Every tool is written from a close reading of the Template Creator CK 5.6.8 source and the package passes its full verification harness, but the add-on hasn't been exercised end to end against a live site yet.
The read and diagnostic tools are safe to run and are the best place to start โ they're where most of the value is anyway, and they can't change anything. The writes are narrow on purpose: project metadata, page settings, font metadata, and files inside template folders that Template Creator CK generated. Before running any of them on a site you care about, take a backup. If you hit something, I'd genuinely like to hear about it โ that feedback is what takes the experimental badge off.
Open source
GPL-2.0-or-later, the same license as Joomla itself. Source lives on GitHub.
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