AI Tools

EmDash has a built-in Model Context Protocol (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.

Your site’s MCP server

The MCP server is enabled by default. EmDash mounts /_emdash/api/mcp unless you turn it off. The endpoint accepts OAuth or personal access bearer tokens; an admin browser session by itself does not authenticate an MCP request. OAuth lets the person connecting the client choose scopes before EmDash issues the token.

To disable it, set mcp: false in your Astro configuration:

emdash({
	mcp: false,
});

Connect an AI client

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.

codex mcp add emdash-site --url https://example.com/_emdash/api/mcp
codex mcp login emdash-site

Work with site content

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

• 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”, “Schedule the announcement for June 1st at 9am”, or “Cancel the schedule on the launch post”
• 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?” or “Create a French draft linked to this English post” (when i18n is enabled)

Bylines

• Browse bylines — “List the guest contributors whose names contain ‘Lee’”
• Credit content — “Add Priya Shah as the primary byline on this post”
• Manage bylines — “Create a guest byline for Sam Rivera” or “Update this contributor’s bio”
• Translate bylines — “Show the locale variants of this byline”

Creating, updating, deleting, and translating bylines requires the Editor role. Content write tools accept existing byline IDs when the caller has permission to create or edit that content.

Media

• Browse media — “List all uploaded images” or “Show me PDFs in the media library”
• Check details — “Get the details for this media item”
• Upload files — “Upload this base64 image as banner.png”
• Confirm signed uploads — “Confirm the upload with this storage key”
• Update metadata — “Set the alt text on the hero image to ‘Mountain sunset’”
• Remove files — “Delete the old banner image”

media_upload accepts base64-encoded bytes, stores the file, registers the media item, and returns the ID and URL. It enforces the site’s MIME-type and upload-size limits.

media_create completes a pending upload created through POST /_emdash/api/media/upload-url. Upload the file with the returned signed URL, then pass its storageKey to media_create from the same user account. Confirmation checks that the stored file exists and matches the size supplied when the upload URL was requested. This workflow requires Author or a higher role; Contributors can use media_upload.

Search

• Find content — “Search for posts mentioning ‘accessibility’” or “Find anything about TypeScript across all collections”

Taxonomies

• Browse — “List all categories” or “Show me the tags”
• Create terms — “Add a ‘tutorials’ tag” or “Create a ‘Frontend’ subcategory under ‘Engineering’”
• Rename terms — “Rename the ‘frontend’ category to ‘Web Frontend’”
• Move terms — “Move the ‘tutorials’ tag under the ‘guides’ category” or “Detach ‘react’ from its parent”
• Delete terms — “Delete the unused ‘archive’ tag”

Menus

• View menus — “Show me the main navigation menu” or “What’s in the footer menu?”
• Create menus — “Create a new ‘sidebar’ menu”
• Edit menus — “Rename the ‘main’ menu to ‘Primary navigation’”
• Set items — “Replace the items in the main menu with Home, Blog, About, and Contact”
• Delete menus — “Delete the unused ‘mobile’ menu”

Site settings

• Inspect — “What’s the current site title?” or “Show me the social links”
• Update identity — “Set the site title to ‘Acme Blog’ and tagline to ‘Stories from the team’”
• Set logo / favicon — “Use this image as the site logo” (after uploading it with media_upload)
• SEO defaults — “Set the default OG image to the new banner” or “Update the title separator to a vertical bar”
• Social handles — “Add our GitHub and YouTube links to the social settings”

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

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

Permissions

When an MCP client opens the OAuth consent page, every permission it requested is selected by default. Clear any permission the client does not need before approving access. The resulting token is limited to the permissions you keep selected and the permissions allowed by your EmDash role, so granting fewer permissions never increases what the client can do.

EmDash rejects a tool call when either the token scope or the user’s role is insufficient. A client may explain that error, but EmDash remains the authority that enforces it.

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

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