Answer Pilot

Answer Pilot is the bring-your-own-API-key AI search visibility plugin. Dedicated AI-visibility tools charge €49 to €199 per month — mostly because they bundle the LLM API costs you would otherwise pay directly. Answer Pilot orchestrates the queries; you keep the bill. Typical cost on a small site: under €1/month, paid to Perplexity directly.

Beyond citation tracking, the plugin handles the full AI-readiness checklist most WordPress sites are missing:

• Citation tracking — runs your keywords against Perplexity on a schedule, looks for your brand in the response and the cited sources, stores results locally. Multilingual prompt templates (English, Dutch, French, German, Spanish) so multilingual sites get answers in their actual language.
• llms.txt and llms-full.txt generators following the proposed standard, rebuilt automatically on content change.
• AI-bot crawl analytics — detects 19 known crawlers (OpenAI GPTBot/ChatGPT-User/OAI-SearchBot, Anthropic ClaudeBot/Claude-Web, Perplexity, Apple Applebot-Extended, Meta, ByteDance, Amazon, Common Crawl, Cohere, Mistral and more) and logs each visit with daily pruning.
• Robots.txt analyzer — flags AI bots accidentally blocked by your security plugin, per crawler.
• Per-post extractability scoring — 0–100 grade across 9 LLM-readiness heuristics with concrete suggestions in the editor sidebar.
• FAQ schema auto-emission — detects question-style H2/H3 headings and adds FAQPage JSON-LD.
• Admin dashboard — metric cards, hits-per-bot, top crawled pages, extractability rankings, robots.txt analysis, citation history with sources.

The plugin only contacts an external service (Perplexity) on explicit user action, only when a Perplexity API key + brand name + keywords have been configured. See “External services” below for full disclosure.

Why this and not the other llms.txt plugins?

Three concrete differences from the existing field:

1. Citation tracking is core, not promised “soon”. The plugin actually queries Perplexity, parses the response, and tells you whether your brand appears — not just a generator with “citation tracking coming soon” stickers.
2. Bring your own API key. You pay LLM providers directly. No SaaS markup. No subscription needed for the core experience.
3. Multilingual prompts. Citation queries are phrased in the language of your site (en/nl/fr/de/es), so non-English sites get AI answers in their actual language instead of artificially-translated English ones.

Features

• llms.txt and llms-full.txt generators — AI-readable index of your site, with smart caching that auto-invalidates on content change.
• AI-bot crawl analytics — automatic detection of 19 known AI crawlers (OpenAI GPTBot/ChatGPT-User/OAI-SearchBot, Anthropic ClaudeBot/Claude-Web, Perplexity, Apple Applebot-Extended, Meta, ByteDance, Amazon, Common Crawl, Cohere, Mistral and more) with daily pruning.
• Robots.txt analyzer — see at a glance which AI crawlers your robots.txt blocks vs allows.
• Content extractability scoring — per-post score 0–100 with grade A–F across 9 LLM-readiness heuristics, plus actionable suggestions in the editor sidebar.
• FAQ schema auto-emission — detects question-style H2/H3 headings and adds FAQPage JSON-LD to boost AI-citation likelihood.
• AI citation tracking (BYO Perplexity API key) — track whether Perplexity cites your brand for the queries that matter, in your site’s language. Your API key never leaves your server.
• Admin dashboard — metric cards, hits-per-bot, top crawled pages, extractability rankings, robots.txt analysis, citation history with sources.
• Settings — retention 7–365 days, per-bot-type logging toggles, post-type whitelist, FAQ toggle, citation language override.

Privacy

• No human visitor tracking. AI-bot hits are stored locally with no IP addresses.
• No external services called on our behalf. The robots.txt analyzer fetches your own robots.txt. The citation tracker uses your API keys and talks only to the AI engines you enabled (see “External services”).
• GDPR-friendly. No PII collected, no cookies set, no telemetry sent.
• All data is stored in your WordPress database in two custom tables (*_answer_pilot_bot_hits, *_answer_pilot_citations) and dropped if you uninstall.

How AI citation tracking works (BYO API key)

1. Get a Perplexity API key at perplexity.ai/settings/api (a few cents per query at the time of writing).
2. Paste the key in the plugin settings along with your brand name and a list of keywords.
3. Daily (or on demand), the plugin queries Perplexity in your site’s language, parses the response, and records whether your brand appears.
4. The dashboard shows citation rate over 30 days, latest result per keyword, sources cited, and the full AI response.

Typical cost for a small site (10 keywords × 30 days): less than €1/month, paid directly to Perplexity. No middleman markup.

Pro

An optional Pro subscription (see the Pro features page inside the plugin) unlocks:

• OpenAI and Anthropic citation engines alongside Perplexity — same BYO-API-key model, you bring the keys.
• Daily automatic citation runs (Free runs weekly + on demand).
• Competitor tracking — up to 5 competitor brands with a share-of-voice table on the AI Citations page.
• Email alerts when a keyword starts or stops citing your brand.
• Agency tier with multi-site licensing.

Licenses are verified offline with public-key cryptography: the plugin never phones home, and Pro features keep working without any connection to our servers.

Coming soon

• Gutenberg sidebar with live extractability scoring

External services

This plugin can connect to three external services — Perplexity always, OpenAI and Anthropic only when enabled with a Pro license — and only as part of the AI Citations feature. None of them is contacted on install, activation, or page loads. Every service is called with your own API key; billing is between you and the provider directly, and Answer Pilot does not proxy, broker, or charge for API calls.

Perplexity API (api.perplexity.ai)

What the service is and what it is used for: Perplexity is an AI answer engine. Answer Pilot uses the Perplexity Chat Completions API to ask Perplexity questions about the keywords you configure, then parses the response to detect whether your brand was cited.

When data is sent:

• When you click “Run citations now” on the AI Citations admin page.
• When the daily (Pro) or weekly (Free) cron event fires — but only if you have configured a Perplexity API key, a brand name, and at least one keyword on the Settings page. Without those three values configured, no cron call is ever made.

What data is sent: a JSON request body containing your configured keyword (phrased as a prompt in your site’s locale, e.g. “Answer this question in detail and cite specific brands, websites and sources where relevant: best wordpress seo plugin 2026”) and an Authorization: Bearer <your-api-key> header. The plugin does not send your site URL, user data, or anything you have not explicitly configured as a keyword.

Where: requests go to https://api.perplexity.ai/chat/completions via wp_remote_post(). Responses are stored locally in the *_answer_pilot_citations custom database table.

Authentication: the plugin uses your own Perplexity API key, which you obtain at perplexity.ai/settings/api and paste into the plugin Settings page. Billing for API usage is between you and Perplexity directly. Answer Pilot does not proxy, broker, or charge for API calls.

Service terms: by configuring a Perplexity API key in this plugin you agree to Perplexity’s Terms of Service and Privacy Policy.

OpenAI API (api.openai.com) — Pro, opt-in

What the service is and what it is used for: OpenAI operates ChatGPT. When you enable the OpenAI engine (Pro), Answer Pilot uses the OpenAI Responses API with web search to ask ChatGPT your configured keywords and detect whether your brand is mentioned or cited.

When and what data is sent: identical to Perplexity above — only on manual runs or the citation cron, only when the engine is enabled and an OpenAI API key is configured; the request contains your keyword phrased as a prompt and your own Authorization: Bearer API key. Requests go to https://api.openai.com/v1/responses via wp_remote_post(); responses are stored locally.

Service terms: by configuring an OpenAI API key you agree to OpenAI’s Terms of Use and Privacy Policy.

Anthropic API (api.anthropic.com) — Pro, opt-in

What the service is and what it is used for: Anthropic operates Claude. When you enable the Anthropic engine (Pro), Answer Pilot uses the Anthropic Messages API with the web search tool to ask Claude your configured keywords and detect whether your brand is mentioned or cited.

When and what data is sent: identical to Perplexity above — only on manual runs or the citation cron, only when the engine is enabled and an Anthropic API key is configured; the request contains your keyword phrased as a prompt and your own x-api-key header. Requests go to https://api.anthropic.com/v1/messages via wp_remote_post(); responses are stored locally.

Service terms: by configuring an Anthropic API key you agree to Anthropic’s Consumer Terms of Service / Commercial Terms and Privacy Policy.