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EmDash

AI Tools

EmDash has a built-in MCP server that lets AI assistants work directly with your site’s content. You can ask Claude, ChatGPT, or other tools to draft posts, update pages, manage media, search your content, and more — all through natural conversation.

Setting Up

Section titled “Setting Up”

Your site’s MCP server URL is:

https://example.com/_emdash/api/mcp

Replace example.com with your domain. For local development, use http://localhost:4321/_emdash/api/mcp.

Connectors added in claude.ai work in both the web app and Claude Desktop.

  1. Go to Settings > Connectors

  2. Click Add custom connector

  3. Enter your site’s MCP server URL

  4. Click Add — your browser opens for you to log in and approve access

  5. Start a new conversation, click + in the chat input, then Connectors, and toggle your site on

For Team and Enterprise plans, an Owner first adds the connector from Admin Settings > Connectors. Members then connect individually from their own settings.

What You Can Do

Section titled “What You Can Do”

Once connected, you can ask the AI assistant to perform any of these operations in natural language. You don’t need to know the tool names — just describe what you want.

Content

Section titled “Content”
  • Browse content — “Show me the latest 10 blog posts” or “Find all draft pages”
  • Read content — “Get the post called ‘hello-world’ and summarize it”
  • Create content — “Write a new blog post about our summer sale” or “Create a draft page for the About section”
  • Edit content — “Update the pricing page to mention the new plan” or “Fix the typo in the FAQ post”
  • Publish and schedule — “Publish the summer sale post” or “Schedule the announcement for June 1st at 9am”
  • Compare versions — “Show me what changed in the homepage since it was last published”
  • Manage drafts — “Discard the draft changes on the about page” or “Duplicate the newsletter template”
  • Translations — “What translations exist for the welcome post?” (when i18n is enabled)

Media

Section titled “Media”
  • Browse media — “List all uploaded images” or “Show me PDFs in the media library”
  • Check details — “Get the details for this media item”
  • Update metadata — “Set the alt text on the hero image to ‘Mountain sunset’”
  • Remove files — “Delete the old banner image”
Section titled “Search”
  • Find content — “Search for posts mentioning ‘accessibility’” or “Find anything about TypeScript across all collections”

Taxonomies

Section titled “Taxonomies”
  • Browse — “List all categories” or “Show me the tags”
  • Create terms — “Add a ‘tutorials’ tag” or “Create a ‘Frontend’ subcategory under ‘Engineering‘“
Section titled “Menus”
  • View menus — “Show me the main navigation menu” or “What’s in the footer menu?”

Schema (Admin only)

Section titled “Schema (Admin only)”
  • Inspect — “What collections exist?” or “Show me the fields on the posts collection”
  • Create collections — “Create a new ‘testimonials’ collection with name and quote fields”
  • Modify schema — “Add a ‘featured’ boolean field to posts”

Revisions

Section titled “Revisions”
  • View history — “Show the revision history for this post”
  • Restore — “Restore the post to its previous version”

Permissions

Section titled “Permissions”

What you can do through an AI tool depends on your EmDash role. The AI assistant operates with the same permissions you have in the admin panel:

RoleWhat the AI can do
AdminEverything, including schema changes
EditorAll content, media, taxonomies, and menus. Can view schema.
AuthorOwn content and media
ContributorOwn content (no publishing) and media

If you try something you don’t have access to, the AI will let you know.

Tips

Section titled “Tips”
  • Be specific about collections. Say “create a blog post” rather than “create a post” if you have multiple collections.
  • Ask for the schema first. If you’re unsure what fields a collection has, ask “What fields does the posts collection have?” before creating or editing content.
  • Review before publishing. Ask the AI to create content as a draft, review it in the admin panel, then ask the AI to publish it — or publish it yourself.
  • Use compare for review. Before publishing, ask “Compare the live and draft versions of this post” to see exactly what will change.
  • Rich text fields use Portable Text. The AI can write content for rich text fields, but complex formatting is best done in the admin editor.

For Developers

Section titled “For Developers”

The MCP server endpoint, authentication methods, OAuth discovery, tool parameters, and error handling are documented in the MCP Server Reference.