A TYPO3 editor's working day with an AI assistant: four jobs from chat

An editor's day in TYPO3 is made of small jobs: a page without a meta description, a headline that needs a better word, a photo without alt text. With TYPO3 MCP you hand those jobs to an AI assistant one request at a time, and each one ends with a check and a way back. We ran four of them on our demo install, on the Mustermann Outdoor website. MCP, the Model Context Protocol, lets an assistant such as Claude work inside TYPO3 through tools that AI Foundation provides for free. Two of the four jobs use tools from licensed extensions, and the post says which.

The day on our demo had four jobs, in this order:

1. Find the gaps. Which pages have no meta description?
2. Write the descriptions. A meta description for one product page, in English and German.
3. Fix a headline. A better headline in both languages, with a dry run first.
4. Alt text. A description of a product photo for screen readers.

After the last job the assistant cleared the page caches, and we checked the website on desktop and phone. At the end we put every change back, so the website looks as it did before the day started.

The day started with a question, not a change: Which of our Mustermann Outdoor pages have no meta description? The assistant searched the English pages with pages_search and found two: the Cargo E-Bike K-1 and the Basecamp 4 Tent. A question like this changes nothing, so it is a safe start to any day. For a full audit of titles, descriptions, noindex and canonicals, see the TYPO3 SEO audit by conversation; for questions about content, ask your TYPO3 anything.

The second request filled one gap: Write a meta description for the Cargo E-Bike K-1 page, in English and German, from what the page says. The assistant read the page's content elements with content_list and wrote one description per language. It saved them with t3ai_generate_meta_description, an MCP tool of AI Assistant. In this mode the assistant writes the text and the tool stores it in the page's SEO field.

On the website, both language versions of the K-1 page now carried a meta description. Without an AI Assistant licence, the same field can be written with records_apply, AI Foundation's core tool for writing many records in one all-or-nothing call.

The third job is the kind of edit that comes up all day: Change the K-1 headline to "Room for two children or the weekly shop", in English and German. Dry run first. The assistant wrote both headlines in one records_apply call:

1. Dry run. With dryRun, the server reported two content elements to update, then rolled everything back.
2. Write. The same call without the dry run changed both headlines and returned a batch ID.

Keep that batch ID. With records_undo it takes the whole batch back in one call. More edits of this kind, from text to order and visibility, are in everyday edits from chat. A phone number or product name that appears on many pages is a job for find and replace.

The fourth job made a photo readable for screen readers: Write alt text for the photo of the City E-Bike C-3. AI Accessibility brings the MCP tools for this. t3aa_list_files_missing_alt_text listed the images without alt text, t3aa_get_file_for_metadata gave the assistant the image's address, and the assistant looked at the photo. It wrote: Black city bike with light blue tyres and a wicker basket on the front, parked on a brick pavement outside a shop window. t3aa_update_file_metadata stored the text in the file's metadata.

On the website the C-3 image now carried that alt text, on the English and on the German page. The German page showed the English text because the file had no German metadata yet. German alt text is a record of its own per language, so ask for it as a separate job. Files from chat, from usage checks to clear names, are covered in TYPO3 fileadmin from chat.

After the last job the assistant cleared the page caches with cache_clear. We then opened the K-1 page on desktop and phone: the new headline in English and German, and a meta description in the page source of both. On our demo we then took the day back:

• The headline went back with records_undo and its batch ID, after a dry run of the undo.
• The meta descriptions and the alt text have no batch ID: the AI Assistant and AI Accessibility tools write the field directly. We wrote the old, empty values back with one records_apply call, after a dry run.

Afterwards the K-1 page looked exactly as before the day, on desktop and phone, and the C-3 image had no alt text again. AI Foundation can also hold changes in a TYPO3 draft workspace for review.

What the assistant cannot do for you

• It does not know your brand voice by itself. Read every description and headline before it stays.
• It cannot take back a meta description or alt text by batch ID. Ask it to note the old value first.
• It does not write German alt text unless you ask. The German page shows the English text until then.
• It writes only what your backend user may write. A page or file you may not edit is refused.

The video for this episode runs three of the four jobs in one Claude chat on our demo install: the question which pages have no meta description, a meta description for the Cargo E-Bike K-1 in English and German saved on the pages, and a new K-1 headline in English and German with a dry run first. It then shows the new headline in the TYPO3 Layout module, the saved text in "Description for search engines" on the SEO tab, and the K-1 page on the website in English and German. The alt text job is not in the video. Shown in Claude; other MCP assistants work too.

The question, the headline and the way back use AI Foundation's core tools, which are free and open source, no licence key, no registration. The meta descriptions use a tool of AI Assistant, the alt text tools of AI Accessibility. AI Assistant, AI Accessibility, AI Chatbot and AI Search add their own MCP tools for writing, translation, alt text, chatbots and search. Each needs its own licence. Together with AI Foundation they bring 100+ MCP tools.

What your assistant reads, it sends to its vendor, as with any chat, and for alt text that includes the photo. Keep that in mind before you let it read pages or files that are not public yet.

The other post of this episode sets pages to go live and expire on a date, with short-lived redirects. Episode 5 covered your first prompts and draft workspaces. If you are new to the series, start with TYPO3 MCP use cases: what you can hand to an AI assistant, on one map.

The series comes from T3Planet by NITSAN Technologies, a TYPO3 Association Gold Member with more than 15 years of TYPO3 work. Its episodes are written by Jürgen, our AI Consultant for TYPO3. Every episode runs its job on our demo install before it is published.

All episodes of MCP in Practice for TYPO3