Weglot MCP: stage settings locally, publish them to the cloud

Launching a Weglot language privately before visitors see it

A Weglot MCP request to add a language can go live in one step or be staged. weglot-add-destination-language takes enabled, true by default; set to false, the language is what Weglot's dashboard calls private, served to logged-in administrators as a preview and hidden from visitors. Like every language change, it still needs weglot-push-options-to-cloud before Weglot acts on it.

There is no ability that flips an existing language from private to public. Deleting and re-adding it would work but is the wrong tool, since the delete is destructive and drops the local translation cache. Make the switch on the Weglot dashboard once the preview has been reviewed, then run weglot-refresh-from-cloud so the site's copy of the settings matches. Before adding any language, weglot-get-status shows the plan's destination-language limit and word usage against the quota, which is worth reading because a new language is translated across the site's content.

Writing Weglot exclusion rules that match what you meant

weglot-add-exclude-url accepts Weglot's nine match modes: START_WITH, END_WITH, CONTAIN, IS_EXACTLY and MATCH_REGEX, plus a NOT_ version of the first four. A rule can apply to chosen languages only; with no languages listed it applies to all of them. START_WITH /checkout covers the checkout and its endpoints; IS_EXACTLY /checkout/ covers only that URL, so an order-received page would still be translated.

For regular expressions, write the pattern bare, such as ^/members(/|$). If it arrives wrapped in slashes, GoBuildWP strips them before saving, because Weglot adds its own delimiters and would otherwise read yours as literal characters and match nothing. Deletion is by position from weglot-list-exclude-urls, and positions renumber after every delete, so a batch of deletions means re-listing between calls.

Restyling the Weglot language switcher

weglot-edit-button-settings changes only the switcher fields you send and keeps the rest: whether the language shows as a full name or an ISO code, whether a label shows at all, a dropdown or a flat list, flags on or off, and the flag style, one of rectangle_mat, shiny, circle or square. Weglot's internal numbers for those styles are refused, so the agent has to use the names. custom_css replaces the switcher's bundled CSS, which makes it the one setting here worth reading first with weglot-get-settings section button and keeping a copy of.

Like language and exclusion edits, a switcher change waits for weglot-push-options-to-cloud. Check the result on a phone as well as a desktop, since a flat list with full names that fits a desktop header can wrap badly on a narrow screen. Changing the source language also stages a local pending edit. Publishing that edit can disrupt the project's translations; verify Weglot's behavior and a recovery plan before changing a live project's source language.

Stale Weglot settings: clear the cache or refresh from the cloud

When the site and the Weglot dashboard disagree, start with weglot-get-translation-cache-state, which reports whether the weglot_cache_cdn and weglot_slugs_cache transients exist and their timeout. weglot-clear-translation-cache deletes them so the next page load fetches fresh data; it is an ordinary write. weglot-refresh-from-cloud goes further, fetching the project settings and rewriting the local options with them, and is classed destructive because it can discard translated slugs that exist only on this site.

Credentials deserve the same care. weglot-set-api-key validates a key with Weglot before saving it and never writes it to the change log, but a key typed into an AI chat has passed through that client and its provider. Rotating the key in Weglot's own settings screen avoids that. Under Read Only the agent can still read settings, status, exclusions and slugs; on Production Safe the destructive Weglot abilities wait for confirm. The Weglot reference lists every field, and the Polylang page covers a plugin that stores translations in WordPress instead.

• "Add Italian as a private language, publish the change, and tell me how to preview it."
• "Read only: list our exclusion rules and say which ones would still let /checkout/order-received/ be translated."
• "The switcher still shows Dutch after I removed it on the dashboard. Check the cache state first, then fix it."