Barry Caldwell 
Artificial intelligence (AI) company Anthropic has developed a chatbot called Claude AI, which can be used in Slack to answer questions, provide information, and generate content. The tool is accessible as a website by invitation and through an app that can be added to Slack. Once integrated into the workspace, users can directly send Claude a request or message. Claude can help with creative and collaborative writing, summarizing concepts, and more. It will also remember the entire Slack thread and all messages, allowing users to refer to specific comments and references in a conversation.
Anthropic suggests several tasks that users can ask Claude to tackle. These include getting a summary with bullet points and prioritized action items of lengthy Slack threads or long websites, turning conversations into structured data inputs for customer relationship management (CRM) entries, engineering tickets, tables, and more, sharing a website with Claude and asking questions about the content, and brainstorming ideas with a group, with each participant able to mention Claude and further refine the output.
However, like most AI tools, Claude has certain limitations. It may not correctly assess its own ability or memory, and it may hallucinate or make up information. It can make mistakes with complicated arithmetic and reasoning and even more basic tasks. Also, it doesn’t have general internet access, though it can follow links that users share with it.
The Claude Slack app is currently in beta mode and free to use. To get started, users will need either their own workspace in Slack or a workspace that they administer and one for which they’re able to add apps. They can then add Claude either by browsing to the Claude page on the Slack App Directory and clicking the button for “Add to Slack” or by opening Slack first, clicking the Apps link on the left sidebar, typing the word Claude in the search field, and then clicking the Add button for Claude. The app then appears in Slack under Apps.
To submit a question or other request, users can click the Messages tab and type their message in the Message Claude field. Claude then responds. To continue the thread, users can reference a previous comment in the conversation in a new request. To start a new thread, they can type /reset and then submit the request. Claude then forgets the previous conversation. Users can treat Claude as a member of their team or workspace by including it in a chat. To do this, they can select a channel in which they want to kick off a conversation, type @Claude and do the same for any other people in the channel whom they want to reach, and then type their question, comment, or request. After submitting the message, they’ll be told that Claude is not in the channel. Clicking the Invite Them button generates the response, which can be viewed in the sidebar. Anyone in the conversation can then write and submit a follow-up question or request, including @Claude before the message.
For more details and an FAQ about the app, users can check out Anthropic’s Claude in Slack page. They can also send feedback and bug reports directly to Anthropic at support@anthropic.com.
