How Paperclip handles this
Paperclip treats the warm-up as work with an owner. After a release ticket closes, a follow-up ticket goes to the web agent: warm shop and blog, and record the queued and processed counts. Paperclip wakes the agent, which calls start_preloader on each site, then get_preloader_status, and posts the numbers on the task. The trace shows every Hub call it made, which is the record you read if a site is slow the next morning.
The Hub reaches the agent one of two ways. On the adapter route it was added with claude mcp add as the heartbeat's OS user and signed in once in an interactive claude session. On the connector route it sits on Paperclip's Connectors page, and each Hub tool has a setting of Allowed, Ask first or Off. For this job, get_preloader_status can be Allowed, while start_preloader, stop_preloader and update_settings, which switches the module on when a site refuses, start Off and are promoted to Ask first. The Hub publishes no tool annotations, so Paperclip classifies them by name; check where each landed.
The Claude Code adapter runs headless with dangerouslySkipPermissions on by default, and a server added on the adapter skips Paperclip's action permissions and review queue, so on that route a start runs the moment the agent calls it. xSpeed Hub has no confirmation step of its own, and it treats the preloader as low-risk, asking the agent to confirm only when the site is unclear or the call covers every site. If the ticket says to wait for a reply, the agent posts its plan and stops, which is the instruction working, not a lock.
Set up Paperclip once
Already connected? Skip to the prompts. Alternatives and troubleshooting are on the Paperclip guide.
1Put your sites in xSpeed Hub
Sign in at app.xspeedcache.com with Google or email; the Hub is free and has no site cap. Then connect each WordPress site from its own dashboard: click Connect Hub in the xSpeed Cache top bar, then Connect via xSpeed Hub. Each site needs the free xSpeed Cache plugin.
2Add xSpeed Hub to the agent Paperclip runs
For a Claude Code agent, run this on the machine that hosts it, as the same OS user the Paperclip heartbeat runs as. Paperclip's docs say MCP wiring lives at the adapter and runtime layer, and user scope makes the Hub available to every Claude Code agent that user runs.
claude mcp add --transport http --scope user xspeedhub https://app.xspeedcache.com/xspeed/mcp
3Sign in once, or use a token
Start claude interactively as that same user, run /mcp, choose xspeedhub and approve access on the xSpeed Hub page. Claude Code keeps the credentials, so later headless runs need no browser; claude mcp get xspeedhub shows the status. On a host with no browser, add the server with the connection token from Connect AI in the Hub instead, ideally with Read-only everywhere on.
# Interactive sign-in claude /mcp # Or a token, no browser claude mcp add --transport http --scope user xspeedhub https://app.xspeedcache.com/xspeed/mcp \ --header "Authorization: Bearer <your connection token>"
Full Paperclip setup, sign-in options and FAQ
Before you send a prompt that changes something
Reads change nothing on your sites, though contact_support emails xSpeed support. Writes run once your connection allows them, so your client's approval prompt and a read-only connection (the token's Read-only everywhere switch, or a Viewer sign-in) are the gates that matter. Paperclip's Claude Code adapter runs headless with dangerouslySkipPermissions on by default, which lets the agent call MCP tools without asking. Set it to false and a tool that needs approval does not run. A server added on the adapter does not pass through Paperclip's action permissions or review queue. A Paperclip connector does: each Hub tool is set to Allowed, Ask first or Off, and because the Hub publishes no annotations Paperclip classifies them by name, which can under-classify, so start every write Off. xSpeed Hub has no confirmation step of its own, so a write that gets past those settings runs as soon as your connection allows writes. For unattended routines, send a connection token with Read-only everywhere on, which makes the Hub refuse every write tool.
What do I ask?
Three prompts written for Paperclip. More for this job are below.
Ticket: use xSpeed Hub to start the preloader on shop and blog after this release, and record queued and processed counts here.
Weekly routine: use xSpeed Hub to read the preloader status of every site and post one line per site. Read only, start nothing.
With xSpeed Hub, find out why the preloader on docs refused to start, and propose the fix on this ticket without applying it.
What happens, step by step
The first visitor to an uncached page pays for building it. The preloader fixes that by visiting your pages first. Through xSpeed Hub an agent can start the crawl on one site or on every site in a workspace, watch how far it has got, and stop it. The crawl runs inside WordPress in the background; the agent only starts it, reads its progress and stops it.
01
Check the cache and the preloader
get_cache_status tells the agent whether page caching is on, because there is nothing to fill when it is off. get_preloader_status shows whether a crawl is already running, so the agent does not start a second one.
02
Make sure the preloader is switched on
The preloader module is off on a fresh install, and the site refuses start_preloader until it is on. The agent can read the module with get_settings and, if you agree, switch it on with update_settings on the preloader module. The Hub tells the agent to briefly confirm intent before an update_settings call, but that is guidance to the agent, not a lock.
03
Start the crawl
start_preloader makes the site read its sitemap, follow any nested sitemap indexes, drop URLs that your cache exclusion rules skip, and queue the rest. The call returns once the queue is built; the pages are then fetched in the background, a few per run. For every site at once the agent passes site: "all", and the Hub starts the sites one after another with a one-second pause.
04
Watch the progress
get_preloader_status reports whether a crawl is running, how many URLs it has processed out of the total, the last URL it visited and the most recent errors. It works on one site at a time, so for several sites the agent calls it once per site.
05
Read what failed
A page that answers 403 or 406 usually means a server firewall is blocking the warmer by its user-agent, not that the page is broken. The status message names the user-agent to allow. A crawl that queues no URLs is reported as an error with the reason, not as a success.
06
Stop it if the server struggles
stop_preloader ends a running crawl. It is safe mid-run: pages already warmed stay cached. The agent can stop one site or every site in the workspace.
Reference
| Start and stop | start_preloader and stop_preloader (write) |
|---|---|
| Progress | get_preloader_status (read): running or not, processed out of total, last URL, recent errors |
| What gets crawled | The sitemap (the WordPress one at /wp-sitemap.xml unless you set another), nested indexes followed, excluded URLs skipped |
| Needs | The preloader module switched on (it is off by default) and page caching on |
| Pages per run | 5 by default, 1 to 50, set in the preloader module |
| Schedule setting | manual, hourly, daily or weekly, set in the preloader module |
| Every site at once | start_preloader and stop_preloader accept site: "all"; get_preloader_status does not |
| Fan-out pacing | Sites start one after another with a 1 second pause, one result per site |
| Warmer user-agent | xSpeed-Warmer/1.0, the string a firewall rule would need to allow |
| Stopping | Safe mid-run; warmed pages stay cached |
| Read-only access | A Viewer member's sign-in, or the connection token with Read-only everywhere on: start_preloader and stop_preloader are refused; get_preloader_status works. An OAuth sign-in by anyone else gets the scopes the client asks for. |
| Confirmation | None on the Hub; your client's prompt is the gate |
Rules worth keeping
- Warm after a purge, not instead of one. The Hub tells the agent that starting the preloader after a purge saves the next visitor from paying for the rebuild.
- A crawl requests every page in the sitemap, so it adds load to the origin. Start with one site, and on a small host keep Pages per run low or stop the crawl if the site slows.
- start_preloader and stop_preloader are write tools. The Hub calls the preloader low-risk and only asks the agent to confirm when the target site is unclear or the call covers every site, so your client's approval prompt and read-only access (a Viewer sign-in, or the connection token with Read-only everywhere on) are the gates that matter.
- A fan-out only starts the crawls. Check each site with get_preloader_status afterwards, and treat some sites failing to start as a partial result, not a failure of the whole call.
Good to know with Paperclip
Routines fire on a cron schedule or a webhook and wake an agent with nobody watching, which suits a crawl report and not a crawl start on the adapter route. The preloader module already has its own Schedule setting in WordPress, manual, hourly, daily or weekly, so let that warm the sites and give the routine a read-only prompt that posts get_preloader_status for each site on the task. For that agent, a connection token with Read-only everywhere on makes the Hub refuse start_preloader and stop_preloader whatever the adapter does. If you want a start tied to your deploy pipeline through a webhook routine, run it on the connector route with start_preloader on Ask first, so it waits for a person.
More prompts for this job
They work in any client connected to xSpeed Hub.
Use xSpeed Hub to start the preloader on shop and tell me how many URLs it queued.
Using xSpeed Hub, how far through its crawl is blog? Show processed against total and any errors.
With xSpeed Hub, purge the cache on docs, then warm it again.
Use xSpeed Hub to start the preloader on every site in my workspace and tell me which ones refused.
Use xSpeed Hub to stop the preloader on shop. It is slowing the server down.
The preloader on shop says it is disabled. Use xSpeed Hub to turn the module on, then start the crawl.
Using xSpeed Hub, which of my sites has no running crawl and a low hit ratio?
Frequently asked questions
Keep going
Warm the cache with other agents
More with Paperclip
Documentation
- How to warm your cache ahead of visitors
- How to crawl your sitemap
- How to enable Page Cache
- Managing your fleet with xSpeed Hub
- How to write prompts for xSpeed Hub
- Paperclip + xSpeed
- Every AI agent that works with xSpeed
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