SteadWeave Companion

Description

Free Forever: 1 website, complete monitoring

SteadWeave Free includes complete monitoring for one website, free forever. There is no trial period and no expiration.

SteadWeave Companion is the complete WordPress plugin, not a separate “Lite” or feature-locked edition. Paid plans are available when you need to monitor more websites.

SteadWeave Companion is the lightweight WordPress-side connector for the SteadWeave external monitoring service.

The Companion does not perform the central monitoring workload locally. After a WordPress administrator explicitly starts setup and confirms the external-service disclosure, the plugin connects the site to SteadWeave. After pairing, authenticated technical heartbeats let the service evaluate WordPress health, software versions, update availability and other website-assurance signals.

The PHP, JavaScript, CSS, translations, documentation and bundled image assets distributed in this WordPress.org plugin package are licensed under GPLv2 or later. The SteadWeave name and source-identifying marks may also be protected by applicable trademark law; those trademark rights are separate from, and do not restrict, the GPL license granted for the copies of the bundled assets distributed with this plugin. See ASSET-LICENSE.txt and LICENSE.txt.

SteadWeave is a separate SaaS service. Service plans may differ by the number of websites that can be managed. The Companion does not hide premium PHP code or unlock local plugin functionality with a license key.

What the Companion does

• Provides a request-first secure pairing flow.
• Creates a cryptographic installation identity used to verify control of the WordPress installation.
• Stores issued access credentials locally using authenticated encryption when supported by the server.
• Sends authenticated technical heartbeats only after pairing.
• Advertises locally available Smart Fix capabilities to the paired service.
• Receives bounded, authenticated Smart Fix commands only after pairing and only after an authorized SteadWeave account user explicitly requests Assisted Remediation.
• Can update supported SEO metadata through Yoast SEO, Rank Math, AIOSEO or SEOPress when one supported provider is detected unambiguously.
• Can replace exact verified HTTP hyperlink references in published WordPress post content without requiring an SEO plugin.
• Verifies Smart Fix targets and current values, reports structured results, and supports bounded preflight and rollback safeguards.
• Reports WordPress/PHP versions, plugin/theme inventory and update state, site URLs, limited server context and WordPress cron state used by the monitoring service.
• Receives SteadWeave branding and the customer dashboard URL as part of authenticated service responses.
• Provides connection diagnostics and an administrator-only recovery path.
• Stops scheduled authenticated telemetry when pairing is reset or the plugin is deactivated.
• Integrates with WordPress privacy-policy, personal-data export and personal-data erasure tools for the locally stored enrollment email.

The plugin does not add analytics, advertising trackers, marketing pixels or public-site credits.

The Companion does not download or execute arbitrary PHP or JavaScript from SteadWeave, does not install plugins or themes remotely, and does not expose a general-purpose remote code execution mechanism.

External Service

SteadWeave Companion relies on the external SteadWeave service. The official production endpoint is:

https://app.steadweave.com/

No enrollment data or SteadWeave telemetry is sent merely by activating the plugin. The administrator must open the SteadWeave screen, review the disclosure and explicitly confirm the connection before the first enrollment request. The manual recovery path requires the same acknowledgement.

During enrollment the plugin sends:

• WordPress site URL and site name;
• the email address entered by the administrator;
• site locale;
• Companion version;
• installation UUID;
• cryptographic enrollment material used to verify that the request originated from this WordPress installation.

After pairing, authenticated heartbeats send technical website telemetry including:

• WordPress and PHP versions;
• WordPress core update availability;
• installed plugin identifiers/files, names, versions, activation state and update availability;
• active theme name, stylesheet identifier, version and update availability;
• site URL and home URL;
• site icon URL;
• a limited server-software string;
• multisite state;
• WordPress cron state;
• heartbeat timestamp;
• Smart Fix capability availability and supported fixer names.

Regular heartbeat telemetry does not include page or post content.

The administrator-only manual recovery path sends one authenticated technical snapshot to verify candidate credentials before those credentials are stored locally.

The SteadWeave server also receives normal network metadata, such as the source IP address, as part of operating the HTTPS service.

Assisted Remediation / Smart Fix

When an authorized SteadWeave account user explicitly requests Assisted Remediation, the paired service may include a bounded Smart Fix command in an authenticated heartbeat response. The command identifies the requested fixer, target page, expected current state, proposed value and command identifier. Commands are subject to local validation, expiry and anti-replay controls before a write can occur.

Depending on the selected fixer and local capabilities, Smart Fix can:

• update a meta description through one supported SEO provider;
• update a self-referencing canonical URL through one supported SEO provider;
• update an SEO title through one supported SEO provider;
• replace exact verified http:// hyperlink references with their corresponding https:// references in published WordPress post_content.

SEO-specific fixers are available only when one supported SEO provider is detected unambiguously. The HTTP-reference fixer does not require an SEO provider.

After a Smart Fix attempt, the Companion posts a structured result to the authenticated SteadWeave remediation-result endpoint. Depending on the fixer, that result can include the target page URL, command UUID, provider, whether data changed, previous value, new value, preflight evidence, rollback state and validation details used to verify the requested action.

To prevent replay of Smart Fix commands, the Companion keeps a bounded local command ledger containing sanitized remediation results for up to seven days. Disconnecting or uninstalling the Companion removes this local ledger.

No public Companion REST endpoint provides a general remote content-write API. Smart Fix commands are accepted only through authenticated responses from the paired SteadWeave service and are limited to the fixers implemented in this plugin.

Service information:

• Service website: https://steadweave.com/
• Application: https://app.steadweave.com/
• Documentation: https://docs.steadweave.com/
• Privacy Notice: https://steadweave.com/privacy/
• Terms of Service: https://steadweave.com/terms/
• Support: https://steadweave.com/support/

On normal production installations, the Companion is pinned to the official SteadWeave application endpoint. Custom central URLs are available only for local/development/staging environments or when the site owner deliberately enables the development override with STEADWEAVE_COMPANION_ALLOW_CUSTOM_CENTRAL.

Privacy

SteadWeave Companion adds suggested privacy-policy text to Settings > Privacy in WordPress.

The suggested text describes enrollment data, regular technical heartbeat telemetry, Assisted Remediation commands, supported WordPress changes, the structured remediation results returned to SteadWeave and the bounded local Smart Fix anti-replay ledger retained for up to seven days.

The plugin also registers with the WordPress personal-data exporter and eraser for the enrollment email stored locally by the Companion. Service-side monitoring and remediation data is controlled by the SteadWeave service and is described in the SteadWeave Privacy Notice.

For service privacy information see https://steadweave.com/privacy/.

Security

• Production service communication requires HTTPS.
• Production central-server selection is pinned to the official SteadWeave endpoint.
• Enrollment callback endpoints use short-lived verification state, rate limits and cryptographic verification.
• Enrollment completion HMAC authentication is performed by the REST route permission callback before the write callback can run.
• Pairing access tokens are stored with Sodium secretbox when available, or AES-256-GCM through OpenSSL as a fallback.
• Remote responses used for onboarding, portal links and branding are restricted to the selected SteadWeave service host.
• Smart Fix commands are limited to locally implemented fixers, include anti-replay and state-validation controls, and are not a general-purpose remote execution channel.
• WordPress administrator actions require manage_options plus WordPress nonces.