Delta is an agent-first WordPress theme with built-in MCP that lets you build pages and templates through an AI agent. In our first look, we use Cursor to set up a site, create a style guide, and make changes using plain HTML, CSS, and JavaScript.
We don’t believe WordPress themes are dead, and Delta gives us a different approach to explore. Let’s start with what the theme does, then work through the setup and the controls available inside WordPress.
Key Takeaways
- Delta is an agent-first WordPress theme that lets an AI agent create pages and templates using HTML, CSS, and JavaScript.
- Delta connects WordPress to an AI agent through MCP, but users need their own AI subscription.
- The theme includes controls for agent abilities, design tokens, templates, integrations, snapshots, and direct editing of Delta-built elements.
- In our first look, we used Cursor to set up a site, create a style guide, edit page elements, and test Sketchbook on one page.
Delta WordPress Theme—First Look Video
What to Expect From This First Look
This is an unedited, high-level walkthrough of Delta’s agent-first WordPress theme, not an end-to-end tutorial. The goal is to show how someone experiences the product and its website when getting started, including any questions or stumbling points along the way.
For full disclosure, we had spent about 30 minutes with Delta several weeks earlier. The product had changed enough since that brief visit that another first look made sense.
The InfluenceWP video wasn’t paid for or sponsored, and it contains no affiliate links. Delta is an InfluenceWP partner. Businesses interested in these videos can use the InfluenceWP partner membership, and one-off public or private product reviews are also available.
How Delta Builds Without a Page Builder
Delta uses your AI agent as the building interface. You describe what you want, and the agent writes the page markup directly rather than selecting elements from a page-builder widget catalog.
The theme’s stated approach is straightforward: standard syntax, minimal output, and scoped styles. Pages ship with the markup and styles the agent wrote, without additional builder wrapper markup or builder stylesheets.
Each page can keep its CSS and JavaScript alongside its HTML. The focus is on sending visitors only what that page needs.
Templates Start Empty
Delta doesn’t ship with ready-made templates. The agent creates the templates your site needs, including headers, footers, pages, posts, archives, search results, 404 pages, and loop items.
Once those templates exist, you can apply a shared change wherever you use the template. That gives you the familiar benefit of updating a template once instead of editing every post individually.
Content editing also remains available in WordPress. You can write posts with blocks or use HTML that the agent continues editing.
Checking Delta’s Customer Trust Pages
Before working inside WordPress, we checked the pages that help us understand who’s behind a product and how well it’s supported.
The documentation was clear, and its search worked. Searching for “Memory” returned the relevant documentation, which is a useful check when you’re learning a product through its docs.
Delta also had a detailed About page and a changelog with version numbers and dates. Those are small details we appreciate. Together, the documentation, the About page, and the changelog checked the boxes we were looking for before starting the hands-on walkthrough.
Connecting Cursor Through MCP
Delta requires your own AI subscription. It doesn’t include a bundled AI plan or an allowance of tokens.
We used Cursor for this walkthrough. Delta’s website describes support for any MCP client, so Cursor is the client used here rather than the only option.
The connection uses MCP to connect an AI agent to the WordPress site. Inside Delta’s Agent settings, we selected MCP rather than the API option, chose Cursor, and copied the connection URL.
That URL can be passed to Cursor with a request to help establish the connection. Our connection was already in place when we began the setup, and Delta showed Cursor as connected.
The distinction is worth keeping clear: Delta provides the connection and WordPress-side tools. The AI subscription comes from the agent service you’re using.
Approvals, Abilities, and Safety Controls
Delta’s website describes each change as a proposal with a diff. Nothing is written until you approve it.
It also describes guard rails for destructive actions and snapshots of design-system changes that can be restored. Scoped client access, where an agent could change content without changing site structure, was on the roadmap at the time of this first look.
Controlling What the Agent Can Do
WordPress’s abilities available to AI agents describe the individual actions that an agent can take. Delta brings its available actions into a single Abilities screen.
Inside WordPress, you can switch abilities off individually, disable them all in one action, or turn them all back on. Search and filtering make the list easier to work through.
We liked having that control available directly in the dashboard. It gives you a clear way to limit the actions available to agents.
Setting Up a Mostly Clean WordPress Site
The test site started with one post, no pages, and a small amount of media-library content. Twenty Twenty-Five had been active before we installed and activated the latest Delta version available for the walkthrough.
The site wasn’t completely fresh. We had removed plugins and cleaned up menus, but some remnants remained, including a reference to a shop.
We asked Cursor to “set up my site.” Delta loaded its onboarding workflow and worked through the following conversation:
- It asked which design system to use. We chose Delta’s default rather than supplying our own CSS or design files.
- It noticed the old Shop menu item and asked about installing WooCommerce. We declined.
- It offered to install Contact Form 7. We declined that too.
- It proposed Home, About, Blog, and Contact pages, but no contact form. We approved all four for publication.
- It created the pages and menus, then built eight basic templates using Delta’s tokens and the site’s existing design settings.
During setup, the agent offered to take a snapshot before doing the template work. While we paused the recording, the agent continued without taking that snapshot. That was part of the actual onboarding experience.
The completion message reported checks of the setup, including accessibility and contrast checks. It then offered possible next steps, such as adding a voice note to the site context, rebranding the default design, or writing real page copy.
Creating a Style Guide With Delta’s Design Tokens
Next, we used a prompt from Delta’s documentation and adapted it to the About page. The request was to build a style guide using Delta’s seed design tokens, covering colors, typography, spacing, buttons, and cards.
Cursor created a complete page showing those elements, along with contrast examples. After refreshing the About page, we could see the default design system presented as a visual reference.
“Brand Guide” would have been a better name for the page than “About,” but the name worked. It gave us a starting point for discussing the design with the agent.
Instead of talking about an abstract set of tokens, we could look at the actual colors, text, spacing, and components on the site and request changes from there.
Adding FAQs and Working Beside the Site
On the Contact page, we asked the agent to create a section titled “Frequently Asked Questions” with sample questions and answers.
A follow-up request asked it to turn those FAQs into an accordion. Cursor said it would use the site’s tokens and check that the items opened and closed.
That showed how a simple conversation could continue an existing piece of work. We didn’t need to start the section again to change its layout.
Cursor’s Browser Split View
Initially, we had Cursor beside a separate browser window and refreshed the page manually to see changes.
We then opened Cursor’s browser split view, with the conversation on one side and the site on the other. When we asked it to change the FAQ heading to blue, the browser view refreshed and showed the update.
That was a better working arrangement for the walkthrough. With multiple monitors, the WordPress dashboard could also stay open separately.
The documentation also mentioned image workflows. If your agent has an image-generation tool connected through MCP, you can request an image, such as a hero image, as part of the work. We didn’t test image generation here.
Managing the Design System, Fonts, and Recipes
Delta includes a compact design system with primitive and semantic tokens for color, typography, spacing, and other design settings.
The website describes several ways to work with it. You can extend Delta’s defaults, bring a framework such as Automatic CSS, Core Framework, or Tailwind, or start with your own setup.
Design Controls in WordPress
The Appearance area’s Design screen exposes the design system directly. We could restore defaults, manage font families, and remove selected fonts.
The interface also included component settings for buttons and inputs, along with an option to download the design-system material as a ZIP file.
Delta’s dashboard has its own light and dark appearance switch. That’s separate from adding a visitor-facing light and dark mode to a website.
Reusable Recipes
Delta’s website also includes recipes, which are reusable workflows for common tasks.
Two caught our attention: creating a design system from a brand brief and preparing light and dark mode colors. We were interested in both because they relate to building and managing a consistent design system.
We didn’t end up running either recipe during this walkthrough.
Skills, Rules, Guard Rails, and Design Notes
Delta’s Agent Context area separates skills, rules, and guardrails.
Skills describe repeatable workflows the agent can follow. Rules describe instructions it should follow while doing that work. One example discussed in the walkthrough was a rule that required blog headings to use either title case or uppercase.
Skills and rules can be managed by agents. Guardrails are theme-owned safety toggles.
Examples of the many guardrails shown that we mentioned included “Verify Before Done” and “Destructive Care.” Those controls let you decide which built-in safety behaviors remain active.
Notes for Design Decisions
The design system also has a Notes area for project-specific constraints, principles, and usage guidance. Agents read those notes before building.
The documentation clarified that these notes should concern how the site looks or behaves, rather than tasks or page content. Examples included a contrast requirement or a decision about when to use a particular section style.
Elsewhere in the interface, we could inspect skills, see whether they were enabled, view their source, and open them for editing. An order value was also available, although we didn’t investigate its behavior in depth.
Installing Icons Without Extra External Requests
Delta’s icon manager supports complete icon packs, selected individual icons, and custom SVG uploads.
You can install an available open-source set or create your own pack using SVG files or a ZIP upload. Delta says uploaded files are sanitized.
The agent places installed icons by name. Icons are included inline without an external request, and only the icons used on a page are sent to that page’s visitors.
That fits the same approach described for page markup and styles: include what’s needed rather than loading an entire collection on every page.
Inside WordPress, we could inspect installed packs, browse the available catalog, search for icons, and start creating a custom pack.
Editing Templates and Display Conditions
The templates created during onboarding were available in Delta’s Templates screen.
Opening the 404 template showed separate HTML, CSS, and JavaScript views. There wasn’t JavaScript in that particular template, but the editing area was available.
We could rename a template, change its type, and edit its code directly. The editor also showed some autocomplete functionality during a brief test. We discarded that test rather than saving changes.
Choosing Where Templates Appear
The Conditions area controls where templates are included or excluded. We opened a condition that applied across the entire site and then explored options for adding exclusions.
Available conditions included individual pages and author-related views. That supports situations such as using one header across most of a site and a different header on selected pages.
We didn’t build a complex condition set, but the interface exposed more than a simple site-wide assignment. It provided a detailed conditions builder for controlling template placement.
Using Field Maps for Dynamic Content
Delta’s Field Maps screen binds post metadata and taxonomies to dynamic placeholders.
When adding a map, the available sources were meta, taxonomy, option, and relationship. The interface provided fields for the relevant keys.
The example discussed was a template heading containing a dynamic city name, such as a page about the top barber shops in a particular city. A placeholder could supply the city rather than requiring a separate hard-coded heading for each item.
We kept this part brief. The walkthrough established that field mapping was available, but it didn’t demonstrate a finished dynamic template.
We also checked this area after enabling the Meta Box integration. That didn’t become a complete test of how the integration and field maps work together, so we left the deeper setup unexplored.
Memory, Feature Toggles, Scripts, and Snapshots
Delta’s Features screen included Soft Navigation, Coming Soon, and Memory.
Memory was already enabled. Its description covered a site work log recording what changed, what remained open, and what a later session could pick up. Logging could be automatic or requested.
The website also described the agent recording decisions and unresolved items, with those notes readable from the panel. That provides the next session a written record of where work stopped.
Header and Footer Scripts
A Scripts area lets you add code to the header or footer. That provides a place for those additions inside Delta rather than requiring another scripts plugin for the task.
We inspected the options but didn’t add a script during the walkthrough.
Saving and Restoring Snapshots
The Snapshots screen showed options to restore, pin, or delete saved snapshots. We could also create one manually at the current point in the work.
We generated a snapshot during the walkthrough. This snapshot was separate from the earlier onboarding offer to save one before template changes.
The interface provided a way to preserve a point in the work and manage the snapshots already available.
Exploring the Site Graph and Sitemap
Delta provides both a graph and a sitemap view.
The graph showed pages, posts, categories, and tags as connected items. We could drag items around, adjust the view, zoom in or out, fit the graph, and expand it.
The legend also acted as a filter. For example, categories or tags could be hidden to focus on pages. Additional controls included sorting and options to exclude entries or relationship types.
Opening Items and Managing Content
The sitemap provided a searchable, expandable view. We could open the Blog branch, select the post beneath it, and see an information card on the right.
That card provided access to editing the post or viewing it on the front end. Other selections exposed details such as slugs, published and draft counts, management options, and access to adding content.
The map also included an agent overview with counts for skills, rules, guard rails, and abilities.
We appreciated the number of useful shortcuts throughout this area. Delta provided several ways to reach content and settings without returning to the main WordPress menus each time.
Working Directly in Delta’s Editor
Delta’s editor gives you direct access to pages, posts, and templates.
For the style-guide page, we could inspect the HTML and CSS and copy either of them directly. The editor also included previewing and inserting a template.
Header and footer settings could inherit the display conditions or be overridden with “Show” or “Hide.” That provided page-level control without requiring us to change the broader condition.
The familiar WordPress block-editing experience was still available for content. We could use blocks and patterns rather than making every edit through the agent.
That distinction remained consistent throughout the walkthrough: the agent can do the building, while WordPress still provides places for you to inspect and edit the result.
Integrations With Forms, Stores, and Custom Fields
Delta’s Integrations screen initially showed no active integrations. The Available tab contained options for forms, ecommerce, custom fields, and other WordPress tools.
Examples shown included WooCommerce, Contact Form 7, WPForms, Fluent Forms, ACF, ACF Pro, Custom Post Type UI, Meta Box, Secure Custom Fields, Pods, and Schema WP.
The integration descriptions were useful because they explained which capabilities would become available.
How Integration Abilities Work
The Meta Box description said the agent would receive Meta Box’s own abilities. We enabled that integration but didn’t complete a custom-field workflow.
WooCommerce’s description outlined product and order abilities alongside Delta’s store abilities through the WooCommerce REST interface. It also described shop, product, cart, checkout, and account pages matching the site’s design.
Our understanding from those descriptions was that an integration could combine the plugin’s abilities with Delta’s own capabilities. We didn’t test every integration or establish that they all work the same way.
Creating a Basic Fluent Forms Contact Form
We did run a small Fluent Forms test.
Its integration description said Fluent Forms handled mail and spam, while Delta created forms through its forms service and built fields through its component pipeline. The description also noted a phone field provided by Fluent Forms Pro.
With the Contact page open in Cursor, we asked for a basic, bare-bones Fluent Forms contact form for testing. The agent built it and reported completion.
This was a quick form-creation test, not a full assessment of submissions, delivery, or spam handling.
Front Panel and Sketchbook
Delta’s Front Panel lets you make direct edits without asking your AI agent to handle every change. Sketchbook gives you a place to work through design ideas with the agent before applying them to your site.
We missed these two features in our first Delta walkthrough, so this follow-up provides them the attention they needed. Both are available through Delta’s toolbar menu.
Find the Delta Menu in the Toolbar
The reason we missed these features was simple: the WordPress toolbar was disabled for our admin account. That meant we never saw Delta’s menu.
Once we enabled the toolbar, the Delta menu appeared with access to the Front Panel and Sketchbook. We started with the Front Panel because it addresses something we mentioned in the first look: you don’t always need your AI agent to make a change.
Sometimes, you want to select a heading and change the wording. Other times, you want to adjust a color. The Front Panel gives you a way to do that directly.
Edit Page Elements With the Front Panel
If you’ve used a page builder or the WordPress block editor, the basic interaction will feel familiar. You select an element on the page, then work with it in the panel.
Select a Delta-Built Element
The Front Panel opens in select mode by default. There is one important requirement, though: the element must have been built with Delta.
When we selected a component that wasn’t built with Delta, the panel displayed a “not built with Delta” message. That component wasn’t available for editing through the Front Panel.
To move elsewhere, we unticked the selection icon to switch into navigation mode. We then browsed to our About page, which contained elements built with Delta, and opened the Front Panel again.
Change Text, Styles, and Code
On the About page, we selected a heading and changed its text to “Brand guide.” That was a quick content edit without involving the agent. We didn’t change the page name as part of that demonstration.
The right-hand panel also provides access to the selected element’s HTML and CSS, plus JavaScript when it’s involved.
For a color change, we could open the CSS, unassign a variable, and set a color directly. Sketchbook offers another way to experiment with colors, but the Front Panel is there when you already know the edit you want to make.
Locate Components With the Map
The Map view shows a mapping of the page’s components. Selecting an individual component exposes information such as its template ID, how many times it’s used, and its connection.
We tried this approach with the header and footer. After choosing a component in the map, we used Select on page to select that component and make it ready to edit.
The panel also includes the Page tab, with individual items, sections, and code available to inspect. Between those views and the map, Delta provides several routes to the part of the page you want to work on.
That’s something we noticed in the first look as well. Delta puts useful information close to the work instead of giving you only one route to locate it.
Check the Design Reference and Other Panel Options
The Design view provides a quick reference for the site’s design system. It includes fonts, colors, typography, spacing, and components such as buttons and inputs.
You can click values to copy them. That gives you a convenient reference while you’re working on a page.
We also revisited Memory, which we covered in more detail in the first look. From the Front Panel, you can review saved memory, reference it, or delete items.
A log is available here too, similar to the one shown in Delta’s back end. The panel also has light and dark modes. These are smaller controls, but they keep the information and interface options within reach.
Create and Manage a Sketchbook Board
From the Design view, we opened Sketchbook and created a new board.
Think of Sketchbook as a scratch pad for design work with your AI agent. You can ask for ideas, review what the agent puts on the board, and keep adjusting it before asking for changes on the live site.
The board controls let you rename a board, create another one, duplicate it, or make a draft page. You can also open its history, share a link, delete the board, and browse the other boards you’re working with.
Sharing a link provides you a way to show a board to a team member or client. Multiple boards also let you keep different ideas available while you decide what you like.
For our test, we started with an empty, untitled board.
Build a Design System in Sketchbook
We asked the agent to create a new design system based on InfluenceWP’s brand blue. We also made the destination clear: the design needed to go into the Delta Sketchbook that was currently open and empty.
That distinction mattered to the test. We wanted to see the idea on the board before asking the agent to apply it to a page.
Explore Different Design Directions
The board isn’t limited to a complete design system. We also discussed asking the agent to try a darker homepage hero image with a larger headline.
Another example was creating two alternate color palettes for a pricing section and viewing them side by side. Those are the kinds of ideas you can put on a board and compare before deciding which direction to take.
Keep Refining the Board
Once the agent added our design system, we could inspect it and decide whether we liked it.
If a particular shade of blue didn’t work for us, we could ask the agent to adjust that shade in Sketchbook. The idea stays available for further adjustments until we’re ready to use it.
You can keep several boards, iterate on different ideas, and mix and match the parts you like. There is no need to settle on the first result.
Apply the Design to the About Page Only
After reviewing the generated design system, we liked the dark-mode look. We initially considered applying it across the site, then narrowed the request to a single page.
Our final instruction was to apply the design to the About page only, nowhere else.
The agent responded that it would scope the changes to that page and reported that the page structure looked right. We then closed Sketchbook and refreshed the About page.
The darker design appeared on the page as expected.
That was the full workflow in practice: create an idea on the board, review it, and tell the agent where to apply it. The destination could be one page, several pages, or the entire site. In our test, we kept the request limited to the About page.
Review Sketchbook’s Storage and Sharing Details
We also read through some of the Sketchbook documentation on the Delta theme website.
The documentation described boards as a post type, with a 1 MB limit per document and 30 retained versions. Shared links last seven days by default, with a duration available up to 365 days.
It also stated that shared boards don’t run scripts, aren’t indexed, and are never cached.
We didn’t test each of those details during this first look. They were documentation points we reviewed while waiting for the agent to finish the design system.
Direct Edits and Design Experiments Have Their Place
The strongest addition for us was the ability to make small changes without involving the agent. The Front Panel gives you direct access to Delta-built elements and their code, so a wording or style adjustment doesn’t need to consume unnecessary tokens.
Sketchbook handles the exploratory work. We could develop a design with the agent, review it on a board, and apply it to a chosen page once we liked the result.
Together, these features give you room for both hands-on editing and agent-assisted design work. Our About page test showed that distinction clearly: edit a heading directly, then use Sketchbook to work out a broader visual change.
Our Take on Delta and WordPress Themes
Delta gave us a useful first look at building through an AI agent while keeping templates, design controls, code editing, and content management inside WordPress. The strongest point was the direct connection between a request in Cursor and the resulting site changes.
We don’t see WordPress themes disappearing. We see different ways to build, and people will continue choosing themes, page builders, or other tools based on how they prefer to work.
Delta’s agent-first approach is a refreshing addition to those choices. This walkthrough showed enough to understand the approach without treating a first look as a complete review.
Frequently Asked Questions About the Delta WordPress Theme
What Is the Delta WordPress Theme?
Delta is an agent-first WordPress theme that uses an AI agent to create and edit site pages and templates. Instead of building pages with a catalog of page-builder widgets, the agent writes HTML, CSS, and JavaScript.
Does Delta Include an AI Subscription?
No. Delta connects WordPress to an AI agent, but users provide their own subscription to the agent service. In the walkthrough, we used Cursor.
Does Delta Come With Ready-Made Templates?
Delta starts without ready-made templates. Its AI agent can create the templates a site needs, including headers, footers, posts, archives, search results, and 404 pages.
Can You Edit a Delta Site Without an AI Agent?
Yes. Delta’s Front Panel lets you directly edit text, styles, and code for elements built with Delta. Sketchbook offers a separate space to test design ideas with an agent before applying them to a selected page or the site.