Shannon Engineering journal

Ideas Feb 15, 2026 4 min read

AI assistants were supposed to assist, but I did all the grunt work: copy, paste, prompt, iterate. Then Cursor showed me what it means to hand a task to an agent that acts instead of talks. But for folks who don't work in an IDE, what would it look like to increase productivity exponentially? This is the question I set out to answer, and the five guiding principles that came out of it.

02

Product

Real web search for every model in Shannon

Every model in Shannon's lineup can now get a real, cited answer from the web, even the ones that never had search of their own — so a cheaper model doesn't have to guess or refuse when a question needs today's answer.

Jun 23, 2026

2 min
03

Product

Sign in with X, and link it to your Google account

You can now sign in to Shannon with X, connect it to an existing Google-authed account (or vice versa), and merge two separate accounts that were created before you ever linked them.

Jun 20, 2026

2 min
04

Product

Intelligent model routing with Auto

Shannon now defaults to Auto: each request is matched to the right model before work starts — Qwen3-Next for straightforward requests, Sonnet 4.6 for the hard ones — and the moment you pick a model yourself, your choice wins.

Jun 17, 2026

3 min
05

Product

Preview agent-built web pages with HTML View

Shannon can now write a web page as ordinary workspace files and show it running live in a sandboxed preview, so asking for a tweak is a small edit instead of a full rebuild.

Jun 03, 2026

3 min
06

Product

Edit Word, Excel, and PowerPoint files, and preview the result inline

Shannon can now edit a Word document, an Excel workbook, or a PowerPoint deck directly — add a row, fix a formula, add a slide — and hand back a new version that renders inline, so you can see the result before deciding whether to keep it.

May 14, 2026

2 min
07

Product

Image generation and editing, versioned in place

Shannon can now generate a new image from a prompt or edit an existing one by referencing its file. Every result versions in place, and the edit's origin — a fresh generation or a derivative of another image — shows up in the activity stream.

May 08, 2026

3 min
08

Product

Import from Google Drive, and accepted edits write back

Import Google Docs, Sheets, and Slides into Shannon, and when you accept an edit on an imported Doc, Shannon writes it back to the original in Drive. The agent works on the same document your team opens tomorrow.

Apr 09, 2026

2 min
09

Product

Track agent changes through Version History

Every document in Shannon keeps its full version history: see exactly what changed between a version and the one before it, flip through versions with the arrow keys, and restore any one with a click. Every agent edit is a version, and restoring never rewrites history.

Mar 01, 2026

2 min
10

Product

Review every agent edit with tracked changes

Shannon's agent edits your document directly, and every change lands as a tracked edit you give one of four answers: accept, reject, rewrite, or branch. You review an agent's work the way you review a teammate's marked-up draft.

Feb 22, 2026

2 min

Signals from building Shannon