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Guide · 4 min read

Talk to your machines

How to ask a machine for real work: where to mention it, what to say, how it asks you back, and the things it can do that you might not expect.

Talking to a machine is a lot like talking to a teammate. Ask where the work is happening, say what you want back, and point it at anything it should follow. Here’s how to get the most out of it.

Ask where the work is

Mention a machine in a channel, a task comment or a doc comment. Where you ask gives it context. Select a sentence in a doc and ask “@AI is this still true?”, and it knows you mean that sentence.

A 👀 from it means it saw you and it’s on it. Ask again while it’s still working and each message gets its own answer. In a machine’s own room you don’t need the @ at all, and you can carry on in any thread it answered in.

Hand it a real piece of work

It’s not just for quick questions. Give it a whole job:

@AI go through every task in this topic and re-prioritise them against the launch date.

@AI triage the backlog: anything that is really a duplicate, say so and name the pair.

@AI read the last two weeks of #support and write a page grouping what people complain about.

It works through the whole board in batches instead of doing a few and stopping. If a job is too big for one go, it tells you where it stopped, and mentioning it again picks up the rest. For a big sweep, ask it to list what it changed and what’s left, then give it a look.

Hand over jobs like these in chat or a comment. Voice is better for quick things, since you’re right there waiting.

It might ask you back

If your ask could mean two things, the machine may reply with a question and a few options. Click one and it carries on. The card keeps a record of what was picked and who picked it.

Once answered, the card is the record: your pick stays, the rest step back.

It checks the workspace first, so it only asks when it really can’t tell. And asking ends its turn, so a question nobody answers just waits there, the way a teammate’s would.

Show it pictures and documents

Paste a screenshot, a photo or a diagram and ask about it. The machine really looks at the picture, so point at the part you care about.

Attach a PDF and it reads the pages, scanned ones too. A PowerPoint, Word or Excel file it reads as well, speaker notes and every row included, and the same goes for anything your team keeps in Files. Zips and clips it only knows by name, so tell it what’s inside.

Ask for more than answers

Every machine in the cloud comes with a few things you might not expect:

Research Searches the web and brings back sources.
Pictures Draws illustrations, mockups and ideas.
Its own browser Clicks through sites and logs in to tools.
Its own email Reads what you forward and sends for you.
  • Research. “What do our top competitors charge?” It searches, reads and comes back with an answer, its sources and dates. It can pull live numbers from places like Reddit, LinkedIn, app stores and Google, too.
  • Pictures. Ask for an illustration, a mockup or a logo idea and it draws one right in chat.
  • Its own browser. It can look things up, click through a site or log in to a tool your team uses. The first time it needs to type somewhere, it asks you first.
  • Its own email. Every machine has an address. CC it, forward it mail, or ask it to email someone the summary.
  • Reminders. “Remind me Friday at 3 to call the bank.” It rings you when it’s time.

It joins in, a little

By default, a machine stays out of conversations nobody aimed at it, apart from the odd emoji. Want more? Set Speaks to Joins in on one machine, or just ask it to, and it may pop into a thread now and then when the talk is right in its lane.

Reply Only a machine set to Joins in, in its own lane.
React A single emoji, nothing more.
Stay out of it What usually happens.

Say its name and it answers. Talking about it doesn’t count: “I already asked Eve about that” won’t summon Eve. If your team wants machines that only ever answer an @-mention, switch off “Machines answer without a tag” in Settings → Machines.

It spots clashes

Machines quietly check what people write against your tasks, docs, decisions and earlier messages. If a message clashes with them, like a date that doesn’t match the plan, a small “flagged a possible conflict” card appears under it, saying what it disagrees with.

Most messages never get one. Announcing a change counts as an update, not a clash, and short replies and plain questions aren’t checked. Each check uses credits, and an admin can turn them off in Settings → Machines → Spend.

Talk to it out loud

When a chat box is empty, the send button becomes a voice key. Press it, or ⌘O, and you’re talking. In a machine’s own room you call that machine, and anywhere else you call your team’s primary machine. It brings its instructions, skills and plugins along and keeps its answers short and quick.

Deep research and reading PDFs stay in chat, since nobody wants to wait mid-sentence. Voice works on every plan, and its minutes use credits like other machine work.

A call with a machine is just you and it. Machines don’t join huddles. They help afterwards instead: a machine reads the transcript and writes the summary on the Transcripts page.

The habit that makes the difference

Keep decisions in Docs and planned work in tasks, and link the right page when you ask for help. If an answer looks off, check where it came from and fix the source. And when a machine gets something wrong, just tell it. It keeps the correction as a lesson and reads it every time after.

Need a hand? Ask in the shared channel with our team, or write to [email protected].