Learning objectives
By the end of this lesson, you will be able to:
- Identify where AI Request Logs and Connector Approvals are accessed in the WordPress dashboard
- Explain what AI Request Logging records and how to interpret the log data
- Apply Connector Approval to control which plugins and themes can use AI connectors on your site
- Evaluate the tradeoffs of enabling Connector Approval on a site with multiple AI-enabled plugins
- Locate where to export and import AI plugin settings, and where to check the plugin’s status in Site Health
Two tools for administrators
As AI features become part of your site’s workflow, two questions become important: what AI activity is happening on my site, and who is allowed to trigger it? This lesson covers the two Admin Experiments built to answer those questions.
AI Request Logging gives you visibility. It records every AI request made on your site and surfaces that data in a dashboard under Tools.
Connector Approval gives you control. It adds a permission layer that requires administrator approval before any plugin or theme can use your configured AI connectors.
Both are enabled in Settings > AI > Admin Experiments.
AI Request Logging
When AI Request Logging is enabled, every AI request made on your site is recorded. Each log entry captures the provider used, the model, how long the request took, how many tokens were used, the status of the request, and what initiated it (a plugin, theme, or WordPress core).
Navigate to Tools > AI Request Logs to view the dashboard. At the top, KPI cards summarize activity across different time periods: the last minute, hour, day, week, month, and all time. Below the cards, a table lists individual requests with filtering and pagination.
By default, internal model discovery calls are filtered out of the view so they do not crowd out actual feature activity. You can include them using the operations filter if needed.
To clear the log table, click Purge logs. Logs are retained indefinitely unless a developer configures a retention period on the site.
💡 Why this matters for you: AI Request Logs gives you an audit trail of what is happening on your site. If AI usage feels unexpectedly high, or if you want to understand which features are generating the most AI activity, this is where you look.
Connector Approval
Connector Approval adds a permission layer between your AI connectors and the plugins or themes that want to use them. When enabled, any plugin or theme that tries to use an AI connector without prior approval has its request blocked. The blocked attempt is recorded as a pending request for administrator review.
Before enabling this experiment, read the warning in Settings > AI carefully: enabling Connector Approval blocks all AI interactions on your site until at least one plugin or theme has been approved. Plan to complete the approval step immediately after enabling.
Navigate to Tools > Connector Approvals to manage access. The page has two sections:
Pending requests lists plugins and themes that attempted to use a connector without approval. For each entry you can click Approve to grant access or Dismiss to remove the entry without approving. Dismissing does not approve the plugin, it simply clears the pending entry while the plugin remains blocked.
Approval matrix shows the full list of active plugins and the active theme, with toggle controls for each connector. Use this to grant or revoke access at any time, independently of pending requests.
When a plugin generates a pending request, an admin notice also appears across the dashboard so you can review it without navigating to Tools directly.
Exporting and importing settings
As of AI plugin 1.3.0, administrators can export the plugin’s non-sensitive settings to a JSON file and import them on another site. Import and export controls are available from the menu on the Settings > AI screen.
This is useful for moving experiment and developer configuration between environments, for example, copying your Editor and Admin Experiment toggles from a staging site to production, or matching a new local environment to your team’s standard setup. Credentials, API keys, tokens, and other sensitive values are excluded from exports and are not overwritten during import, so reconnecting your AI provider is still a separate step on the new site.
💡 Why this matters for you: If you manage more than one WordPress site with similar AI configurations, this saves you from manually re-toggling the same set of experiments every time. It won’t save you a step on reconnecting providers, since credentials are deliberately left out, but it removes the repetitive setup work around them.
Checking AI plugin status in Site Health
The AI plugin also adds a dedicated section to WordPress’s built-in Site Health tool (Tools > Site Health). This section surfaces configuration information alongside status tests that can help you identify setup or connectivity problems, such as a missing provider connection or a misconfigured connector, without needing to dig through Settings > AI or the request logs first.
Choosing when to use each feature
AI Request Logging is low-risk to enable. It runs passively and does not affect how AI features work. It is useful on any site where you want visibility into AI activity, whether for cost awareness, debugging, or accountability.
Connector Approval is more disruptive. It is best suited for sites where multiple plugins use AI connectors and you want explicit control over which ones are permitted. On a simpler site where only the AI Plugin uses connectors, the overhead of managing approvals may not be worth the added control.
On either type of site, enabling Connector Approval requires you to act immediately after enabling it. Do not enable it and walk away.
Site Health and settings export are lower-stakes by comparison: both are useful any time you manage more than one AI-enabled site, and neither changes how AI features behave on the site you’re checking or exporting from.
Key terms
| Term | Definition |
| AI Request Logging | An Admin Experiment that records every AI request made on your site and surfaces the data in a dashboard at Tools > AI Request Logs. |
| Token | A unit of text processed by an AI model. Token counts in the request log reflect how much of the model’s capacity each request consumed. |
| Connector Approval | An Admin Experiment that requires administrator approval before plugins or themes can use AI connectors. Unapproved requests are blocked and recorded as pending. |
| Pending requests | In Connector Approval, a list of plugins or themes that attempted to use an AI connector without approval. Visible at Tools > Connector Approvals. |
| Approval matrix | In Connector Approval, a grid showing all active plugins and the active theme with toggle controls for each AI connector. |
| Settings export/import | A developer tool, added in AI plugin 1.3.0, that lets administrators move non-sensitive experiment and configuration settings between sites as a JSON file. Credentials are excluded. |
| Site Health | A built-in WordPress diagnostic tool. As of AI plugin 1.3.0, it includes a dedicated section showing the plugin’s configuration and connectivity status. |
✅ Check your understanding
- You enable AI Request Logging and notice one plugin accounts for a large share of AI requests. What information in the log would help you decide whether that activity is expected, and what would you do next?
- You are setting up a new site with three plugins that all use AI connectors. You want to enable Connector Approval. What steps would you take immediately after enabling it to avoid disrupting the site?