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Episode 5 · Let an AI assistant help

Silan Hu7 min
Series document · Episode 5

Assistants like Claude or Codex can read your workspace directly: they can find what you wrote before, jot down an idea in passing, and draft changes. There is one rule: they can only propose. Accepting, publishing, and deploying stay with you.


1. Install the skill

bash
silan skill emit           # for Claude Code
silan skill emit --codex   # for Codex
silan skill status

The skill tells the assistant that Silan Viking is on this machine and when to use it. Once it is installed, saying "note this down…" is enough for the assistant to file it in your workspace, without you explaining how each time.

2. Connect MCP

Check that the machine is ready:

bash
silan mcp status

mcp_available=true means you are set. In any MCP client, register the command below as a server; for example, in Claude Code:

bash
claude mcp add silan-viking -- silan mcp serve --stdio

The tools you will use most:

Purpose

Tools

Find content

context_brief, recall, browse, list, read

Capture and organise

capture (file ideas and to-dos in the private agent area), summarize_moments (turn a stretch of moments into a draft article)

Propose changes

propose

Read feedback

stats, crawler_breakdown, source_breakdown, visitors

Check

lint

The deploy tool is off by default and only appears when the server starts with --enable-deploy.

3. Things to ask

  • "Note this down: GEM-Bench was accepted at KDD 2026. Update the project page before the weekend."
  • "What have I written about ads inside AI answers?"
  • "Turn this week's moments into a draft article."
  • "Mark the GEM-Bench project as accepted and add the paper link."
  • "Which pages have AI crawlers read recently?"

"Note this down" goes into the workspace's private agent area (content/agent/), which is never published. The second and the last only read content. Anything that changes an article, project, or CV becomes a proposal for you to review.

4. Review proposals

Proposals are built on your latest Git commit. Commit your own changes first (Episode 4) before asking an assistant to edit, or a proposal can fail validation when it is accepted because it cannot see your newer files.

bash
silan proposal list
silan proposal show <id>
silan proposal accept <id>     # or: silan proposal reject <id>

show lists the changed files and the diff. Accepting is what writes the change into your source files, and nothing goes live on its own: whether and when to publish and deploy is still your call, following Episode 4. If you edited the same file after the proposal was made, run silan proposal rebase <id> first.

Checkpoint

  • silan skill status reports the skill as installed;
  • silan mcp status reports MCP as available;
  • you have reviewed and resolved at least one proposal.

The last episode looks at what happens after you publish.

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