This Year I'll…
This is my emacs carnival blog post for January 2026 responding to Christian Tietze’s prompt “This year I’ll…”
This year emacs-related goals include moving into denote, updating workflows, integrating AI where it makes sense and sharing more publicly. Specific packages will include denote, gptel, and likely something with Claude code. Still loving org-social. This is the year of the verb: “to emacs”.
1 What will you do differently in emacs?
1.1 More sharing and big backlog of projects
What will you do differently in Emacs this year? Or will you just get started? Why?
So many things TODO. Org mode is soooo good at making huge TODO lists. This year I’m hoping to share more of my tinkering in public in git, blogs, my config maybe an emacs-conf talk.
A number of the projects are not strictly emacs, but enablers for further sharing: I plan on resurrecting my own git server using one of my own domains. It’s likely going to turn back into a Forgejo git server. For a while now I’ve needed to get more comfortable with my blogging platform, micro.blog (my current blog is at https://micro.blog/eludom). Micro.blog replaced the hugo blog I was producing (with ox-hugo) which is still up at http://curious.galthub.com/. Micro.blog is hugo on the back end.
I missed a shout-out to JTR in last month’s “The People Of Emacs” carnival. He turned me on to hugo, then micro.blog and always seems to be just ahead of me on interesting emacs/org projects.
1.2 What’s old is new
I have digital flotsam and jetsam that goes back decades, including my old hand-edited HTML index page (http://port111.com/george/) (yes, I use HTML mode). A lot of this stuff needs to be collected. Emacs will be central to that task.
The oldest file for which I have an mtime is .emacs.uu my emacs config file from July 12, 2001 when I was working at UUNET. There’s a TOPS 20 dumper tape in garage that may have emacs (TECO) stuff from the 80s if anybody’s got a TU-77 handy.
Change (and config-twiddling) seem to be the only constants.
plus ça change, plus c’est la même chose.
2 What are you excited about with emacs?
What are you excited about to explore and tinker with? What do you want to perfect?
2.1 Visual Line mode
Let’s start small. This week I switched to using the visual-fill-column mode. Turns out we’re not in the era of VT100s anymore. “Terminals” have more than 80 columns and a lot of people, for some strange reason, don’t break their lines at 80 characters. Up to now, I had stubbornly been setting a fill-column and using fill-paragraph a lot. That’s over:
(remove-hook 'text-mode-hook #'turn-on-auto-fill)
(require 'visual-fill-column)
;; Add visual-line-mode and visual-fill-column-mode to text-mode-hook
(add-hook 'text-mode-hook (lambda ()
(visual-line-mode 1)
(visual-fill-column-mode 1)
(visual-fill-column-toggle-center-text)))
;; Set the desired wrap width
(setq-default visual-fill-column-width 120) ;; because 80 character terminals were a thing?
2.2 Denote - a new workflow
I’m moving into Denote. I’m not sure what the ?final? workflow will be but I know it’s going to be better.
Up until now I’ve been doing the traditional directory structure thing. Blogs here, finance stuff there, travel planning someplace else, etc. And then I have to remember where it all is.
The denote workflow will be some form of files mostly in one directory:
20260113T084007--experiments-using-vpns-for-daily-web-access__tech_writing.org
20260113T115229--debug-and-fix-garage-door__house.org
20251217T081925--jones-family-christmas-letter-2025__public_writing.org
The exact set of tags is a work in progress. The current list includes: emacs,tech,writing,public,money,planning,blogging,travel,retirement,info,house,fitness,family
The key will be to find a minimal, effective, memorable set of tags. I’m trying to follow Karl Voit’s guidance on How to Use Tags. Karl is another person who should have gotten a shout out in my People of Emacs emacs carnival entry last month.
I also have an increasing number of files that are “conversations” with AI (ChatGPT to date), more on AI below. Files that start life as conversations with AI are generally landing in ~/notes/ai/.
I’m currently pushing anything I tag _public to https://codeberg.org/eludom/home.public.notes/src/branch/master/home/public/notes They are likely to move to git.galthub.com once I stand that back up.
2.3 GPTel - AI all the things
I’ve been using ChatGPT in emacs buffers with gptel to ask questions and keep a log of answers. I just type the question in the buffer/file and send it off.
I have a capture template that captures queries in hierarchically structured date tree.
The capture template looks like:
(setq org-capture-templates
'(
;; gptel query
;; [Hit ^X-G (gptel-send) to run the query then ^C-^C (org-capture-finalize) to save]
("g" "GPTel Query" entry (file+datetree "~/tmp/gpt-captures.org")
"* GPTel Query\n %U\n:Query: %^{Enter your query}\n\n%?" :jump-to-capture t)
)
)
Configure ~/tmp/gpt-captures.org to where you want the captures/queries to land.
Running the buffer and providing the query results in a buffer
that looks like
**** GPTel Query
[2026-01-17 Sat 17:07]
:Query: what does :jump-to-capture do in an org capture template
And after running query (^X-G with my bindings, gptel-send) and
saving it (^c^c, org-capture-finalize)
* 2026
** 2026-01 January
*** 2026-01-17 Saturday
**** GPTel Query
[2026-01-17 Sat 17:07]
:Query: what does :jump-to-capture do in an org capture template
In Org mode, the =:jump-to-capture= option in a capture template is used to jump to the newly created capture...
but I’m moving to mostly capturing things as denote notes in notes/ai/ instead. No need for AI/GPT specific org-capture template (above). I’m finding this segregates conversations better, maintains context, allows selective sharing (via _public tags and pushing to git).
The workflow there is to just do a normal denote capture, type the query in the buffer and do ^x-G to run the query. I often iterate/refine the query/have “conversations” in the same buffer.
2.4 Claude Code - AI agent all the things
I’m just starting to explore Claude Code/agentic AI. Yet another paradigm shift. The AIs (or some portion of them) run on your system and do stuff with your things.
I got started with Claude by feeding a twitter thread to ChatGPT and asking how I could replicate some results: https://codeberg.org/eludom/home.public.notes/src/branch/master/home/public/notes/ai/20260114T052256--claud-workflow__public_tech.org
I’ve run the shell (installed claude, type “claude” to start it) and fed it some of my old bash scripts for cleanup and restructuring, no problem. Proofreading text files, no problem. I installed this claude skill, fed it .csv files of credit card transactions (no credentials) and let it find things that could be canceled to save money. You need a $20/month account. I canceled my OpenAI/ChatGPT paid account ($20) because I’m mostly using that via the API (gptel) anyhow.
I’ve been using the clipea cli tool for a bit to just generate “Do What I mean” command lines:
gmj@forum ~ $ ?? what package owns /usr/bin/brave I am on arch linux
📎🟢$ pacman -Qo /usr/bin/brave
Execute? [y/N] y
/usr/bin/brave is owned by brave-bin 1:1.84.132-1
Claude is going to take that about 4 orders of magnitude further, allowing access to as much (or as little) of your local system (files, commands) as you feel comfortable with. Once I learn more, I will probably integrate locally with my mail (offlineimap) and rss feeds to do filtering, scoring, summary reports, etc.
For now, I’m just using the default command line/terminal-based Claude AI, but as I type a new version of agent-shell dropped on MELPA. Emacs integration is probably in the near future.
There’s learning to do.
2.5 org-social - one org mode to communicate with them all
And then there’s org-social. The social network where all your stuff stays on your computer (your posts, your “likes”, your follow list), everything is formatted in org-mode, there is an emacs client, or if you don’t like that you can just curl all your friends’ feeds, ‘cause theirs are all just a single publicly accessible text files too.
If you’ve not tried it, do so. Emacs people need niche places to congregate. This is a ground-up emacs/org-native social network. Check it out. Join. Use it.
3 large projects with emacs?
Are there any large projects in front of you that you’ll emacs with confidence?
I’m pretty sure everything listed above will count as several large projects. Stay tuned.
And much as I dislike project managment and Kanban boards, I may ask one of the AIs to help me with my ever-growing and ever-too-big-to-accomplish TODO lists. Maybe I’ll figure out which ones are more important and get a few of them done. These are exciting times.
4 Emacs, the verb
And Christian, I’m with you on using emacs as a verb:
To emacs, or not to emacs, that is the question.
*Emacso, -are, -avi, -atus* (verb, 1st conjugation)
emacso, emacsas, emacsat, emacsamus, emacsatis, emacsant
- Cotidie, cum discipulis meis, emacso ad software melius discendum.
/(Every day, with my students, I emacs to learn better software.)/
“All your emacsifications are belong to us”