The Stack: Mapping Your Preferred Plugin to Each Functional Category

The Stack is a mapping between a functional category — SEO, Security, Backups, and so on — and the specific plugin you actually use for it. Workflows and AI read this mapping so their guidance, detection, and recommended actions reference your real tools rather than a generic default. It's reference data: selecting a plugin here tells Atarim which tool to reference, and it never installs, activates, or changes anything on a site.

What It’s For, and Why It’s Worth Filling In

Atarim’s workflows and AI agents constantly need to answer one question: which tool does this job on this site? A caching step needs to know your caching plugin. A security scan needs to know your firewall. Without an answer they either guess at whatever is most common, or give advice too generic to act on.

Advice that names your actual tools

With The Stack filled in, a recommendation about caching names the caching plugin you actually run, and a backup step checks the backup tool you actually use. The difference between “consider enabling page caching” and a specific instruction for your specific plugin is the difference between a suggestion and something your team can execute.

One setup, every site

Set it once at workspace level and every project inherits it. You only revisit it when a particular client site genuinely differs, or when you standardise on a new tool across the board.

Detection that sees behind the login

On sites with the Atarim plugin connected, a scan reads the authenticated plugin inventory rather than guessing from the public-facing page. That’s what lets it confirm admin-only categories like security, backups, and caching, which never appear in a front-end scan.

Completely safe to configure

Nothing on this screen touches a live site. Installation is a separate, later, explicitly approved action — so you can map all fourteen categories, change your mind, and change them back without any risk to a client’s site.

Step-by-Step Guide

Opening The Stack

The Stack is where the AI learns which plugin does which job on your sites, so the badges matter as much as the names.

Instructions:

A notice at the top of the screen states the scope plainly: The Stack only applies to WordPress sites with the Atarim plugin installed, because detection and installs require the connected plugin. You can still set the mapping without it — what you lose is confirmation of what’s actually running.

What The Stack Covers

A fixed list of fourteen functional categories. Each has a one-line description of what it’s for, a plugin, and a badge showing where that plugin came from.

Reading the Badges

Each category carries a badge telling you where its current plugin came from. This matters because an inherited default and a confirmed installation look identical otherwise.

Setting the Plugin for a Category

Three sources feed the picker — Atarim's curated list, the full WordPress directory, and whatever was detected on the site itself.

Instructions:

Telling the AI How You Use a Plugin

Each row carries a short description of what that plugin is for. Atarim pre-fills it from the recommended plugin, and you can rewrite it — worth doing when you’ve picked a tool Atarim has no description for, or when your team uses a plugin in a particular way.

Instructions:

This line is what the AI reads to understand the tool’s role on your sites, so a sentence about how your team uses it is more valuable than a generic product description.

Overriding the Mapping for a Single Site

The Stack also appears on each project, so one site can differ from the rest without you rebuilding all fourteen categories.

Instructions:

Scanning a Site to Confirm What’s Installed

A scan replaces assumption with fact, marking the rows Atarim can actually see installed on the site.

Instructions:

Understanding Detection-Only Categories

Page Builder behaves differently from the other thirteen. It’s detection-only, with no Atarim default — Gutenberg, the WordPress block editor, is assumed until a third-party builder is detected on a connected site. Because no plugin is set, the row shows Not configured rather than a green Recommended & Tested badge.

This is deliberate. Page builders are visible in a site’s own content rather than chosen by an agency as a standard, so Atarim detects rather than recommends

How Workflows Use The Stack

This is where the mapping earns its keep. Workflow steps that operate on a functional area declare which category they belong to, and the workflow runner resolves that category through The Stack immediately before the step runs.

The step gets your plugin, not a guess

A caching step in a monthly maintenance workflow resolves the performance category and receives your caching plugin. A backup-and-restore step resolves backups and receives yours. The same workflow template therefore behaves correctly across clients running different tools, without you maintaining a separate copy per client.

Every resolution is recorded

The plugin resolved for each step is written into the workflow’s run trace, so when you open a run you can see which tool the step actually used. If a step behaved unexpectedly, the trace shows whether it resolved the plugin you meant.

Resolution never means installation

Resolving tooling and installing tooling are deliberately separate. A workflow that resolves a category and finds nothing installed requests approval rather than installing inline.

Runs without a specific site

A workflow run that isn’t scoped to one concrete site — an All Projects run with no task site, for example — has nothing to resolve against, and steps simply run without Stack context.

What Happens When a Plugin Is Missing

Configuring The Stack never installs anything. Installation only happens later, at work-execution time — when a workflow or AI chat is doing something that genuinely needs a category’s tooling and finds it missing. Even then, nothing installs on its own:

Requests are de-duplicated per site and plugin, so a workflow that hits the same missing plugin repeatedly won’t fill your queue with copies.

Approving an Install

Configuring The Stack never installs anything, and neither does scanning. Installs are proposed, then wait for a person:

FAQs

Conclusion

The Stack is a small, one-time setup step with outsized payoff. Once it accurately reflects your real plugin choices, every workflow and AI recommendation that touches SEO, security, backups, or the other categories references the tool you actually use rather than a generic guess — and one workflow template works across clients running entirely different tooling.

It's also one of the safest screens in Atarim to experiment with: nothing you do here changes a site, and the only thing that ever touches a live install is an approval you grant yourself.