4 ms·

Hype, certainly. But the way I see it, AI agents created incentives for interoperability. Who needs an API when everyone is job secure via being a slow desktop

by sshine 1y ago

Hype, certainly. But the way I see it, AI agents created incentives for interoperability. Who needs an API when everyone is job secure via being a slow desktop user? Well, your new personal assistant who charges by the Watt hour NEEDS it. Like when the CEO will personally drive to get pizzas for that hackathon because that’s practically free labor, so does everyone want everything connected. For those of us who rode the API wave before integrating became hand-wavey, it sure feels like the world caught up. I hope it will last, but I don’t know either.

mh- 1y ago
Unfortunately, I think we're equally likely to see shortsighted lock-in attempts like this [0] one from Slack. I tried to find a rebuttal to this article from Slack, but couldn't. I'm on a flight with slow wifi though. If someone from Slack wants to chime in that'd be swell, too. I've made the argument to CFOs multiple times over the years why we should continue to pay for Slack instead of just using Teams, but y'all are really making that harder and harder. [0]: https://www.reuters.com/business/salesforce-blocks-ai-rivals-using-slack-data-information-reports-2025-06-11/ https://www.reuters.com/business/salesforce-blocks-ai-rivals...
- ebiester 1y ago
  It's going to take more people willing to move away from slack for those purposes. As it is, I'm going to propose that we move more key conversations outside of slack so that we can take advantage of feeding it into ai. It's a small jump from that to looking for alternatives.
  - sshine 1y ago
    The argument used to be “Let’s move FOSS conversation out of {Slack, Discord} because they prevent conversations from being globally searchable, and they force individuals into subscription to access history backlog.” Getting indexed by AI crawlers appears to be the new equivalent to getting indexed by search engines.
- dgacmu 1y ago
  I'm happier we went with Zulip each day.
  - diggan 1y ago
    (Still) such an overvalued alternative to all these "ephemeral but permanent" chat apps. For folks who like a bit more structure and organization, but still want "live communication" like what Slack et al offers, do yourself a favor and look into Zulip.
- SoftTalker 1y ago
  Sounds sort of like an innovator's dilemma response. New technology appears and the response is gatekeeping and building walls rather than adaptation.
  - brabel 1y ago
    Slack was never an innovator. By the time they showed up there were lots of chats apps. They just managed to go beyond the others by basically embedding a browser engine into their app at a time most thought of that as heresy, I mean a chat app that requires 1Gb to run was a laughable proposition to us, techies. But here we are… MS Teams is even heavier, but users seem to care nothing about that anyway.
    - Valodim 1y ago
      They were never an innovator, they just did this thing nobody else did, that some years later became the norm?
      - secos 1y ago
        Blitzscaled? Yep.
- jetsnoc 1y ago
  I wasn’t aware of this, it’s extremely shortsighted. My employees’ chats are my company’s data, and I should be able to use them as I see fit. Restricting API access to our own data moves them quickly in to the 'too difficult to continue doing business with' category. The reality is that Slack isn’t that sticky. The only reason I fended off the other business units who've demanded Microsoft Teams through the years is my software-engineering teams QoL. Slack has polish and is convenient but now that Slack is becoming inconvenient and not allowing me to do what I want, I can't justify fending off the detractors. I’ll gladly invest the time to swap them out for a platform that respects our ownership and lets us use our data however we need to. We left some money on the table but I am glad we didn’t bundle and upgrade to Slack Grid and lock ourselves into a three-year enterprise agreement...
  - mh- 1y ago
    Precisely the situation I'm in. I've fought off slack-to-teams migrations at multiple orgs for the same QoL reasons, but this will make that much (much) harder to justify.
  - KronisLV 1y ago
    We migrated from Slack to Teams and while it does work, it’s also not very good (UI/UX wise). We also did try out Rocket.Chat and Mattermost and out of all of those Mattermost was the closest to Slack and the most familiar to us.
    - ljm 1y ago
      I’d go for Discord if it had a business version without all the gaming stuff. The dedicated voice/video channels are great for ad-hoc conversations when remote and a lot better than Slack’s huddles. They’re like dedicated remote meeting rooms except you’re not limited by office space.
      - diggan 1y ago
        > I’d go for Discord if it had a business version without all the gaming stuff. Granted, my Discord usage been relatively limited, but what "gaming stuff"? In the servers unrelated to gaming I don't think I see anything gaming related, but maybe I'm missing something obvious.
- kimjune01 1y ago
  If you are interested in scraping slack for personal use, I made a local-only slack scraper mcp: https://github.com/kimjune01/slunk-mcp https://github.com/kimjune01/slunk-mcp
  - tra3 1y ago
    Thanks for building this, but also ridiculous that you had to do it. I miss irc even though slack is objectively better.
    - tomrod 1y ago
      Hard disagree, IRC is still the best chat application out there.
    - ajuc 1y ago
      Jabber & XMPP was the peak of instant messaging. Since then it's been downhill.
- solumunus 1y ago
  I use both daily and Teams absolutely sucks.
  - mh- 1y ago
    Very aware, zero desire to use Teams, that's why I've fought to keep Slack despite the cost. But now they're actively making it more difficult for people like me to say "engineers like it more" and that be a compelling-enough argument.
- msgodel 1y ago
  A big part of my short thesis with Apple is that they'll try to do this sort of thing and it will mean real AI integration like what their customers want will simply never be available, driving them to more open platforms. I think you'll see this everywhere. LLMs mean "normal" people will suddenly see computers the way we do and a lot of corporate leadership just isn't intuitively prepared for that.
iechoz6H 1y ago
Well, interoperability requires competition and if there's one thing we've learnt it's that the tech industry loves a private monopoly.
troupo 1y ago
> But the way I see it, AI agents created incentives for interoperability. There are no new incentives for interoperability. Compare that were already providing API access added MCP servers of varying quality. The rest couldn't care less, unless they can smell an opportunity to monetize hype
citizenpaul 1y ago
MCP it's like API but with 100,000x the operating cost!

by sshine 1y ago

mh- 1y ago

Unfortunately, I think we're equally likely to see shortsighted lock-in attempts like this [0] one from Slack. I tried to find a rebuttal to this article from Slack, but couldn't. I'm on a flight with slow wifi though. If someone from Slack wants to chime in that'd be swell, too. I've made the argument to CFOs multiple times over the years why we should continue to pay for Slack instead of just using Teams, but y'all are really making that harder and harder. [0]: https://www.reuters.com/business/salesforce-blocks-ai-rivals-using-slack-data-information-reports-2025-06-11/ https://www.reuters.com/business/salesforce-blocks-ai-rivals...

ebiester 1y ago
It's going to take more people willing to move away from slack for those purposes. As it is, I'm going to propose that we move more key conversations outside of slack so that we can take advantage of feeding it into ai. It's a small jump from that to looking for alternatives.
- sshine 1y ago
  The argument used to be “Let’s move FOSS conversation out of {Slack, Discord} because they prevent conversations from being globally searchable, and they force individuals into subscription to access history backlog.” Getting indexed by AI crawlers appears to be the new equivalent to getting indexed by search engines.
dgacmu 1y ago
I'm happier we went with Zulip each day.
- diggan 1y ago
  (Still) such an overvalued alternative to all these "ephemeral but permanent" chat apps. For folks who like a bit more structure and organization, but still want "live communication" like what Slack et al offers, do yourself a favor and look into Zulip.
SoftTalker 1y ago
Sounds sort of like an innovator's dilemma response. New technology appears and the response is gatekeeping and building walls rather than adaptation.
- brabel 1y ago
  Slack was never an innovator. By the time they showed up there were lots of chats apps. They just managed to go beyond the others by basically embedding a browser engine into their app at a time most thought of that as heresy, I mean a chat app that requires 1Gb to run was a laughable proposition to us, techies. But here we are… MS Teams is even heavier, but users seem to care nothing about that anyway.
  - Valodim 1y ago
    They were never an innovator, they just did this thing nobody else did, that some years later became the norm?
    - secos 1y ago
      Blitzscaled? Yep.
jetsnoc 1y ago
I wasn’t aware of this, it’s extremely shortsighted. My employees’ chats are my company’s data, and I should be able to use them as I see fit. Restricting API access to our own data moves them quickly in to the 'too difficult to continue doing business with' category. The reality is that Slack isn’t that sticky. The only reason I fended off the other business units who've demanded Microsoft Teams through the years is my software-engineering teams QoL. Slack has polish and is convenient but now that Slack is becoming inconvenient and not allowing me to do what I want, I can't justify fending off the detractors. I’ll gladly invest the time to swap them out for a platform that respects our ownership and lets us use our data however we need to. We left some money on the table but I am glad we didn’t bundle and upgrade to Slack Grid and lock ourselves into a three-year enterprise agreement...
- mh- 1y ago
  Precisely the situation I'm in. I've fought off slack-to-teams migrations at multiple orgs for the same QoL reasons, but this will make that much (much) harder to justify.
- KronisLV 1y ago
  We migrated from Slack to Teams and while it does work, it’s also not very good (UI/UX wise). We also did try out Rocket.Chat and Mattermost and out of all of those Mattermost was the closest to Slack and the most familiar to us.
  - ljm 1y ago
    I’d go for Discord if it had a business version without all the gaming stuff. The dedicated voice/video channels are great for ad-hoc conversations when remote and a lot better than Slack’s huddles. They’re like dedicated remote meeting rooms except you’re not limited by office space.
    - diggan 1y ago
      > I’d go for Discord if it had a business version without all the gaming stuff. Granted, my Discord usage been relatively limited, but what "gaming stuff"? In the servers unrelated to gaming I don't think I see anything gaming related, but maybe I'm missing something obvious.
kimjune01 1y ago
If you are interested in scraping slack for personal use, I made a local-only slack scraper mcp: https://github.com/kimjune01/slunk-mcp https://github.com/kimjune01/slunk-mcp
- tra3 1y ago
  Thanks for building this, but also ridiculous that you had to do it. I miss irc even though slack is objectively better.
  - tomrod 1y ago
    Hard disagree, IRC is still the best chat application out there.
  - ajuc 1y ago
    Jabber & XMPP was the peak of instant messaging. Since then it's been downhill.
solumunus 1y ago
I use both daily and Teams absolutely sucks.
- mh- 1y ago
  Very aware, zero desire to use Teams, that's why I've fought to keep Slack despite the cost. But now they're actively making it more difficult for people like me to say "engineers like it more" and that be a compelling-enough argument.
msgodel 1y ago
A big part of my short thesis with Apple is that they'll try to do this sort of thing and it will mean real AI integration like what their customers want will simply never be available, driving them to more open platforms. I think you'll see this everywhere. LLMs mean "normal" people will suddenly see computers the way we do and a lot of corporate leadership just isn't intuitively prepared for that.

iechoz6H 1y ago

Well, interoperability requires competition and if there's one thing we've learnt it's that the tech industry loves a private monopoly.

troupo 1y ago

> But the way I see it, AI agents created incentives for interoperability. There are no new incentives for interoperability. Compare that were already providing API access added MCP servers of varying quality. The rest couldn't care less, unless they can smell an opportunity to monetize hype

citizenpaul 1y ago

MCP it's like API but with 100,000x the operating cost!