Tips & Tricks

Tips & Tricks

A collection of things worth knowing that make Cooper more useful — and a few that will save you credits.

Start in the right context

Cooper can only act on what its current context reaches. A question about a specific site asked in the Platform context will not find that site’s posts, plugins or files, and vice versa.

  • Platform — “Show me all of my sites”, “What did I spend this month?”, “Are any of my sites unhealthy?”
  • Site — “Review this site for security issues”, “Which plugins need updating?”, “Why might this site be slow?”

Switching context mid-conversation is fine. Everything after the switch uses the new one, and Cooper marks the change in the transcript so the history stays readable.

Ask Cooper what it can do

In a Site context, Cooper’s abilities are discovered from that site, not from a fixed list. Two of your sites can offer different capabilities depending on which plugins are installed. So the most useful opening question is often simply:

What capabilities do you have access to on this site?

Out of the box the HonestHosting plugin covers content and pages, comments, custom post types, taxonomies, menus, widgets, media, users, settings, theme and plugin files, rendered page output, and site maintenance. Any plugin that registers abilities through the abilities-api adds to that list automatically.

Say what you want, not how to do it

Cooper picks the abilities. You get better results describing the outcome — “make the contact page load faster”, “find posts that link to the old domain” — than naming the tool you think it should use.

Show it a screenshot

The composer accepts image attachments (PNG, JPEG, WebP). If something looks wrong in a browser, attaching a screenshot is usually faster than describing it.

Approvals

Anything that changes your site pauses for your approval first, and nothing runs until you answer.

  • Answer promptly. The request carries a countdown and expires if left unanswered. An expired request is not performed — Cooper will tell you it timed out and offer to try again.
  • Sending another message cancels a pending approval. If you change your mind, just say something else; Cooper treats that as moving on and the held action is declined.
  • Read the actual arguments. The dialog lists exactly what will happen. This is the last point at which a wrong action is free to stop.
  • Check your backups before approving updates. Especially plugin, theme, or core updates.

Match the permission mode to the work

Relaxed permissions apply to the current conversation only, and reset whenever you switch context.

Mode Good for Reverts after
Ask before changes The default. Anything you haven’t done before. —
Accept edits A long editing session — content, settings, files. Deletions and installs still ask. 4 hours
Accept everything One specific piece of work you’re supervising. 30 minutes

Accept everything is short on purpose: it is the mode that lets a destructive action run with nobody watching.

Not everything can be undone. Cooper snapshots file changes so they can be rolled back, but deletions from the database — posts, users, comments — and plugin or theme installs cannot be reversed.

Keep an eye on credits

Every turn re-sends the conversation so far, so a long conversation costs more per question than a short one. A few habits that help:

  • One task per conversation. When you move to something unrelated, use New conversation from this summary rather than continuing. You keep the thread of what happened without paying to re-send all of it.
  • Compact before something big. If the context ring is getting full and you’re about to ask for real work, hit Compact now first so it doesn’t happen mid-request.
  • Stay on the default model unless you need more. A Frontier model costs more credits per turn, and the default handles most work. Remember the model is fixed once a conversation starts.
  • Watch the cost readout. The session panel shows what the current conversation has used, in credits and in dollars.

When something goes sideways

  • Stop Cooper halts a turn in progress and keeps whatever it had already said.
  • Retry last message resends your last message if it failed to send.
  • Trust the report over the intent. Cooper is built to tell you what actually happened — if an action was declined, expired, or failed, it says so rather than claiming success. If it ever tells you it did something it didn’t, that’s a bug worth reporting.

For plugin authors

Cooper has no hardcoded knowledge of your plugin. If it registers abilities through the WordPress abilities-api, Cooper discovers them the next time someone opens a session against a site where it’s installed — no platform-side configuration, no integration work, and no LLM keys ever exposed to the site.

If you maintain a plugin and want it to work well with Cooper, clear ability names and good descriptions are the whole job.

Tell us what you think

Do you have tips & tricks? Would you like to see enhancements to our Abilities API integration with WordPress? Do you have a use-case you would like to see us cover? Are we doing something stupid?

If you answered YES to any of those questions, feel free to drop us a line at hello@honesthosting.io, or click the button below to join us on Discord for immediate feedback & access!

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