You can absolutely use WordPress for Cowork against a local-only WordPress install — useful for dry-runs before touching production. There’s one piece of plumbing to set up.
Cowork has to reach your local URL
Your local .local domain isn’t reachable from the internet, and Cowork talks to your site over HTTPS. LocalWP solves this with Live Link.
- In LocalWP, open the site you want to connect.
- Click Settings → Live Link.
- Click Enable. LocalWP gives you an ngrok-style URL like
https://random-words.localwp.io. - That URL is the address your connector will use — download the connector from wp-admin → Cowork on the Local site and add it in Claude Desktop.
Rate limits
Live Link is rate-limited on the LocalWP free plan but more than enough for testing — you’ll only notice a slowdown if you blast hundreds of API calls in a few minutes.
Install the WordPress for Cowork plugin as usual
Inside your LocalWP site’s wp-admin: Plugins → Add New → Upload Plugin, upload wordpress-for-cowork.zip, Activate.
When you’re done
Disable Live Link to stop exposing your local site. Cowork’s pairing isn’t lost — next time you re-enable Live Link with the same URL, the bridge resumes.