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AIThe Agency Hour

Why I Went All-In on Viktor (And Why You Should Too)

I took a break from the podcast. Came back with one thing on my mind.

Over the last 12 months, I have tested every AI tool worth testing. OpenClaw. Manus. Perplexity. Claude. ChatGPT. Gemini. I've lost count. And I landed on one: Viktor.

Not because it's the shiniest. Not because some influencer told me to. Because after months of actual use across my own business and my clients' businesses, Viktor is the only AI tool that works the way I need a team member to work. It lives in Slack. It connects to my tools. It gets things done while I'm doing other things.

I want to explain why, and I want to be specific about it.

The Problem With Every Other AI Tool

Here's what happens with most AI tools. You sign up. You get excited. You paste a prompt into a chat window. You get a response. You think, “This is incredible.” Then you try to make it do something real, and you hit a wall.

The wall is always the same: the AI can't connect to your actual business. It can't see your Google Drive. It can't update your Asana tasks. It can't check your Meta Ads account. It can't pull a transcript from your last sales call. It sits in its own little chat bubble, completely disconnected from how you actually operate.

So what do you do? You start cobbling together Zapier automations. You wrestle with API tokens. You store credentials in an Airtable spreadsheet (which is terrifying, by the way). You spend 4 hours trying to connect your AI to one tool, and by the time it works, you've spent more time on the plumbing than you would have spent just doing the task yourself.

I've lived that. Multiple times. With multiple tools.

What Viktor Actually Is

Viktor is an AI employee that lives inside Slack. You talk to it the way you'd talk to a team member. “Hey Viktor, pull the transcript from my call with Sarah and write me a summary.” Done. “Hey Viktor, check our Meta Ads spend for the last 7 days and flag anything weird.” Done. “Hey Viktor, write a blog post about agency pricing and publish it to WordPress.” Done.

The reason this works is the integration layer. Viktor connects natively to your tools through OAuth. Google Drive, Asana, Meta Ads, WordPress, HighLevel, LinkedIn, YouTube, Xero. Dozens of integrations, all authenticated properly, all managed for you. You don't touch an API token. You don't build a single Zapier zap.

I believe what's happening under the hood is a combination of Anthropic's Claude model, a Pipedream-style integration layer, and a virtual machine that can actually write and run code. That's what makes it different from a chatbot. Viktor doesn't just generate text. It writes scripts, runs them, checks the output, and adjusts. It programs its way through problems.

The integrations alone are worth the price. I'm not exaggerating. If you've ever spent a weekend trying to get a custom GPT to talk to your Google Sheets, you understand what I mean.

Two Ways to Use Viktor (And Why Most People Stop at the First One)

There are two modes.

Mode 1: Quick tasks. You ask Viktor something. It does it. You move on. “Write me a LinkedIn post about X.” “Summarise this PDF.” “Create an image for my social media.” This is how most people use Viktor, and it's already a win. An 8-word prompt in Slack replaces 2 hours of VA work.

Mode 2: Skill files. This is where it gets serious.

A skill file is a structured markdown document that tells Viktor exactly how to do a repeatable task. It's a detailed set of instructions: when to run, what inputs to use, what steps to follow, what the output should look like, and what quality checks to apply.

I have a skill file that takes a single topic, writes a LinkedIn post in my voice (using my actual voice profile, my banned words list, and my writing rules), generates a matching image, shows me both for approval, and then publishes directly to my LinkedIn profile. One prompt. The entire workflow takes about 90 seconds of my time.

I have another skill file that does a full SEO audit for a prospect. I type 8 words into Slack: “Run keyword research for acousticcentre.com.au”. Viktor pulls live data from DataForSEO, builds a Google Doc summary, creates a Google Sheet of the keyword data, generates a client-facing audit landing page, deploys it to Vercel, and posts me a link. Then when I approve, it creates a signable proposal, a 3-month content strategy, and populates an Asana project with all the tasks. From 8 words.

That workflow used to take a VA two full days. Viktor does it in about 15 minutes.

Skill Files Are the New SOPs

I've been telling agency owners to document their SOPs since 2008. Since Tim Ferriss wrote The 4-Hour Work Week, we've spent nearly 20 years trying to document processes and outsource them to cheap labour. How's that worked out for everyone?

Skill files are SOPs for AI. They're better than traditional SOPs because the AI actually follows them. Consistently. Every time. No complaints. No sick days. No “I didn't see that step in the doc.”

I believe learning to write skill files is one of the most important skills for any business owner or employee in 2026. Anthropic published a free guide on how to write them. Claude Code can write them for you. The skill file standard is open and well-documented. This isn't proprietary lock-in. It's a format that any AI can read.

The agency owners in my Headless Install programme are building entire businesses around this. They charge clients $5,000 to $25,000 to set up Viktor, configure the integrations, and write custom skill files. One of them made over $100,000 in 30 days doing this. The demand is there because every business owner knows they need AI, and none of them know where to start.

The “Claude Tag Killed Viktor” Crowd

I need to address this because it keeps coming up.

When Anthropic released Claude with the ability to use tools directly (what some people call “Claude Tag” or “Computer Use”), a bunch of commentators said it made Viktor obsolete. “Why would you pay for Viktor when you can just use Claude directly?”

Because Claude by itself doesn't have your integrations. It doesn't have your skill files. It doesn't have persistent memory of your brand, your clients, your preferences, and your workflows. It doesn't run 24/7 in your Slack workspace, monitoring channels and executing cron jobs and processing approvals while you sleep.

Using raw Claude instead of Viktor is like saying, “Why would I hire an employee when I can just talk to a stranger on the street who's really smart?” The intelligence is the same. The context is everything.

Anyone saying Viktor is dead because of Claude Tag is writing clickbait. They haven't built a real workflow with either tool. They're commenting on demos, not production use.

I run my entire content operation through Viktor. Blog posts, social media, email newsletters, podcast show notes, client portals, Asana task management, WordPress publishing, featured image generation, SocialPilot scheduling. All of it. Every day. In production. That's the difference between a hot take and a real opinion.

What You Should Do on Monday

If you run a business and you haven't set up Viktor yet, you are leaving money and time on the table.

Start with Mode 1. Install Viktor into your Slack workspace. Connect your Google Drive and your project management tool. Start asking it to do things. Get a feel for what it can handle.

Then move to Mode 2. Write your first skill file. Pick your most repetitive task. The one you do every week that makes you want to throw your laptop. Document how it works. Hand that document to Viktor. Watch it do the task better than your last three hires.

If you want to see how this works in a real agency, I built the complete system to run a digital agency with AI instead of employees. Same system running in my own business right now.

See how it works here.

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