On July 31, 2025, Slack hosted our first-ever Reddit AMA focused around Slack development. Kurt Kemple, Senior Director of Developer Relations, and Melissa Chan, Director of Product Management, answered questions about agents working in product management, custom color schemes, and more.

Here, we’ll recap the most interesting discussions. You can view all the questions and answers on Reddit, and be sure to follow u/SlackHQ so you don’t miss our next AMA!

Building on Slack

One of the most popular topics was about building on Slack – how to use AI and Agentforce effectively, creative and exciting apps created by the community, and how recent API updates impact developers.

How have the recent API updates impacted how developers can build with Slack moving forward?

Hey! First I want to say, your data is your data and you can reliably extract it. Customers don’t have a rate limit for internal custom applications, you just need to reach out.

The background is those endpoints weren’t developed for this use case. With the sudden increase in agentic Slack app development, those endpoints started being used heavily for bulk data exfiltration when their intended purpose is ad-hoc message retrieval—think trying to accurately copy your entire workspace (including your privacy settings) vs. enriching a task with context from a thread.

To better support these use cases:

• We’re releasing two MCP servers (one for building and managing apps for Slack Platform and one for accessing information and taking action directly within Slack).
• We’re testing with partners and will be releasing our Real-time Search API. This new RTS API allows your applications to securely access Slack data in real-time without duplicating data. This modern approach decreases latency, ensures data is always up to date and lowers cost for your customers.
• We’re releasing new Block Kit artifacts and AI specific UX improvements that will be readily available to all platform builders from day one.
• We’re investing deeply in new ways for developers building agents to manage context consistently across entire conversations, removing the need to even fetch data that doesn’t change repeatedly.

Lastly, we’re also investing in the overall Slack app development and lifecycle management experience. We’ve recently released support for Bolt apps in the Slack CLI, allowing you to create, run, and deploy apps in hours or days, instead of weeks or months.

Our goal is to make Slack the best place to build with or use AI.
– KK

What’s the most creative or unexpected app you’ve seen the community build on Slack that made you think “I wish I would have thought of that?”

It’s been amazing to see the thousands of new AI app submissions that have been coming in over the last year alone. It’s really hard to choose just one. Slack apps with the power AI is such a productivity boost. I personally love apps that mix a bit of fun into work, especially with games that bring the team together.

One of our Slack Community members, Scott Patton (aka Slack Workflow King), created a workflow that posts to the #new-emoji-alert channel whenever someone uploads a custom emoji. It’s a small thing, but adds a lot of joy and discussion around new emojis!
-MC

For a team just getting started with AI and agents, could you break down the benefit of Agentforce? What’s a good first use-case so we can see value immediately?

A good first-use case is a Help Agent. An agent can help answer commonly asked questions in channel based on data loaded in Agentforce. We can reduce the time spent answering common questions with Agents. Once you build that agent, you can add other actions to handle more advanced use cases.

To help users get started with agents, we have Agentforce Slack Templates which includes Help Agent, Onboarding, and Customer Insights (a great way to surface relevant CRM details directly in Slack).

-KK

Do you see a role for Slack in a Microsoft-first setup?

Yes! Teams is great for what it’s designed for – structured meetings, document collaboration, and deep Microsoft 365 integration. We see Slack coming along side of Teams to provide a singular, searchable platform to centralize conversational data. We also frequently see companies use Slack for IT incident management where you need fast coordination and clear audit trails, engineering workflows, app integrations that pull data from multiple systems into one conversational workspace, and sales collaboration where deals move fast and context matters.

-MC

Managing Slack Notifications

Customizing your Slack notification settings ensures you’re updated on the work you care about. We heard a lot of feedback and questions from users, especially in large organizations, around managing noise.

Is Slack considering how it can improve organization and management of noise in large orgs (thousands of employees)?

Hey! Thanks for the feedback – this is such a real challenge for larger orgs, and we definitely hear you on the noise issue.

The idea of organizing workspaces into sub-spaces is really interesting! I can say that improving navigation and reducing information overload for enterprise customers is something we’re actively thinking about.

In the meantime, a few things that might help with the current setup:

• Using sidebar sections to organize your channels
• Use a consistent naming schema for your channels that clearly call out functions: #marketing-budget, #marketing-campaigns, #product-releases, etc.
• Adjust your notification settings – Setting up keyword notifications instead of joining every channel or trying the “All unreads” view to cut through the noise
• Setting up VIP notifications for key teammates so their messages always get your attention

Really appreciate you taking the time to share this – feedback like yours helps shape where we focus our efforts!

-MC

Why isn’t there a single, consolidated place to view all my mentions, thread responses, DMs, and invites? 

Hey! We hear you on that disappearing notification situation you’re dealing with. In fact I’m happy to report we are actually testing some things right now to address this very issue!

We know that as Slack usage grows what once was signal can become noise if not handled correctly, we’re actively working to better surface signal.

-KK

Slack Feedback

Slack’s community shapes the platform in meaningful ways. We shared a bit on how your input can translate into real product updates, along with some fun origin stories.

How does feedback from the developer community influence product decisions at Slack if at all? Could you share an example of a feature built because of community demand?

We capture as much feedback as we can and it often manifests in product changes that reach Platform!

Here’s a few examples of features that came right from you:

• Conditional branching in Workflow Builder
• Bolt app support in the CLI
• CI/CD support for Workflow apps
• Many of the features in our SDKs and even a few of our APIs

By the way, to submit feedback, you can use `/feedback` inside Slack, or email feedback@slack.com.

-KK

What’s the story on adding “hummus” as a notification? My whole team uses it lol

Love this question! The “hummus” notification is Anna Pickard, Slack’s previous Head of Brand Communications, saying the word “hummus.” It was originally an inside joke for Slack employees only, but then we shared it with the world.

-MC

One feature I really loved and miss is the ability to manually open a thread, DM, channel, etc on the sidebar. I was wondering if this feature would ever come back?

I hear you on the value of manually opening threads, DMs, and channels in the sidebar. It’s super efficient for cross-referencing.

This feature was a crowd-pleaser with Slack employees as well. Good news: this specific sidebar functionality is currently under review! Your feedback, and that of many others, is directly informing our discussions.

-MC

Feature Requests

Every AMA sparks “what if?” questions. Kurt and Melissa explored how teams are experimenting today and what might be possible down the road.

A “catch up” feature after PTO 

Yes, it’s hard to catch up after PTO especially when you have a lot of messages. We’re working on ways to make notifications easier to catch up. You have a great idea to separate them by direct mentions vs. other groups. Stay tuned as we’re actively working on improvements to notifications.

-MC

Is there any appetite to have static voice channels, like with how Discord works?

I haven’t heard about this, but I regularly set up slack channels as “#hangout-” channels and we’ll use Huddles in audio only mode and do co-working together, etc.

Definitely not the same vibe as just hop in channel and go but it does work pretty nicely!

-KK

Working in Product Management

We wrapped the AMA with career questions. Melissa offered practical advice on making the leap from engineering to PM.

I’ve done my best to reshape my resume to fit a PM role, but what can I do/add to my resume standout?

That’s awesome you’re excited about PM! Your SWE background is actually a big asset. Think about times you applied product thinking—did you solve a real user problem, prioritize features, or measure user impact? Try to highlight those stories in your resume.

You can also look into volunteer opportunities to build products where you can show social impact and show product thinking. Best of luck to you! 

-MC

Thanks to everyone who joined our first Reddit AMA! Your input continues to shape the future of Slack. Follow u/SlackHQ so you don’t miss the next one.