Works on localhost and staging

What it is

With your own AI API keys (BYO-key), AISA works perfectly on sites that are not publicly reachable — a Local install on your Mac, a staging server, or a development environment behind a login. The AI calls go from your server straight to the provider (Claude, OpenAI, Gemini, DeepSeek), so the site itself does not need to be reachable from the outside.

This is a real advantage over the cloud AI features of other SEO plugins, which typically require a publicly reachable site because the provider has to fetch your pages. AISA reads the page content locally and sends it to the model, so generation, One-Click, Bulk, rotation, alt-text and schema all function the same on localhost as in production.

The recommended setup for testing is Local (by WP Engine) on Mac, but any localhost or staging environment works as long as your server has outbound internet access to the AI provider.

Questions people ask

Why do other plugins' AI features fail on localhost? Their cloud AI needs to crawl your live URL; a localhost or staging site is not reachable, so the request fails. AISA sends the content to the model from your side instead.

Does Cloud mode also work offline? Cloud mode routes the AI call through the AISA server, so it still needs outbound internet — but the site being indexed does not need to be public. BYO-key is the most self-contained option for local work.

Will the SEO I generate on staging carry over to production? Use Utility → Backup SEO to export a JSON snapshot, then restore it on the live site.

SEO-plugin adapters: Yoast, Rank Math, SEOPress, AIOSEO
Backup and Restore SEO
"Empty response from provider" / connection errors

Works on localhost and staging

What it is

Questions people ask

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