In light of GristCon 2026’s announcement, we’ve been thinking more about the sessions from last year’s event and have collected some highlights, relevant updates, and insights as to what’s on our mind for this year’s sessions. In particular, it’s notable how fast things have changed in less than a single year.
Want to talk at GristCon 2026?
We still have slots available! Fill in the registration form and indicate that you’re interested in speaking and we’ll get in touch.
Ahead of the curve – building with AI
The last year has seen continual growth in the use of AI to help build and manage Grist documents.
Our Vibe View and custom widget builder widgets were and are at the forefront of these workflows, but our recent release of an official MCP server has supercharged these capabilities.
Still, pre-MCP workflows are completely valid, and Evan Buxton’s showcase is still a great walkthrough of how to build no-code custom visualizations.
Ahead of the curve – automations
We launched Grist’s official workflow automations earlier this year, and the design was influenced by what we were seeing by community members.
This Grist + n8n talk by Aude (who has shared even more n8n expertise on our community forum) walks through a very practical use case for automatically sending emails from within Grist.
Small note: our automations support sending emails to team members, but not external addresses (yet!).
Ahead of the curve – integrations
Tareq Kirresh’s session was a fascinating look into a complex workflow that powered real deals and was based on an open source stack.
Backoffice solutions are a good fit for Grist, but Tareq shows that even highly-specific biometric integrations are possible.
With Grist’s new MCP server, creating these workflows is easier than ever.
Update – our self-hosting flow has changed
Jordi’s excellent presentation was a much-needed video walkthrough of getting Grist up and running on your own server.
However, things have changed for the better since this presentation. There’s a whole new first-run setup wizard that makes self-hosting easy enough that blog post writers can do it.
But since Jordi’s talk was a great way to go through the process, we’re hosting a special webinar where a developer will walk through the new process in-depth. Make sure to sign up so you don’t miss it!
Taking accountability – what happened to our sneak peek?
We released it! In the closing remarks/sneak peek session last year, Anais and Paul teased a feature that was a mix between collaborative editing and version control. It’s been launched as an experimental Suggestions feature that you can play with right now!
GristCon 2026 – what’s on our minds?
As we look towards GristCon 2026 (which is not that far away!), there are a few key topics that we’re discussing internally, but also that we’re noticing within the larger community.
MCP MCP MCP MCP MCP.
Security, governance and risk.
Grist tutorials and training.
Managing large Grist deployments.
Global Grist.
That’s it for now – see you in October!
