An AI employee in Slack is worth testing once your team already runs its work through Slack and you set its approval rules first. Viktor’s first useful act for us was a question, not a task: he flagged a forgotten Slack account, then wrote approval-only rules into his job description.
The most useful thing my AI employee did on day one was ask me a question, not finish a task.
The first week with an AI employee tells you more than any feature list, because it shows whether the agent learns how your business runs before it starts acting on it. Every AI tool pitch I see this year promises the same thing: it does the work. The real question for a founder is what it does before you trust it with the work.
Anthony DelPizzo, VP of Marketing at Triple Whale, put the fear plainly when he joined me on episode 497 on giving an AI teammate real media buying work: “Automation can be scary. And especially when there’s money involved, we don’t expect every business to be gung ho immediately and want to sign on board.” He described starting with an agent that queues up actions for approval and earning more freedom over time. That stuck with me, because it’s exactly how you’d onboard a new person.
So when I added an AI employee called Viktor to our own Slack at Fastlane Media this week, I didn’t give him a task. I wanted to see what he’d do first.
Viktor is an AI employee that lives inside Slack and Microsoft Teams, connects to the business tools you give him access to, and takes on work you’d otherwise hand to a person. You talk to him in channels and direct messages the same way you’d talk to a teammate, and he works across the apps you’ve connected.
Viktor’s own site says he connects to over 9,800 tools and asks before anything he can’t undo, with sensitive actions waiting on your approval. I haven’t tested anywhere near that many connections. For us it was Slack, my email and our Google Drive.
Honestly, I expected another chat window with a new name. I’ve tried plenty of AI assistants that answer well and then wait for you to do the actual work. The difference I was looking for was simple: does it learn the business first, and does it ask before acting?
In his first seven minutes, Viktor read our channels, my recent email and the file names in our Drive, described my week back to me, and flagged a Slack account none of us recognized. I gave him no instructions beyond connecting the tools.
He knew our latest podcast episode had just gone out. He knew who handles our invoices. He counted about 40 emails in roughly two hours, mostly guest post pitches and price haggling, tracked across three different sponsor sheets. Close enough to sting.
Then he asked me a simple question: “Do you know this person?”
I didn’t. It turned out to be an outsourcer we hired for a single project a while back. They needed Slack access to work with us, and when the project ended, nobody removed them. That’s on us, and they’re gone now. Slack’s own security tips for protecting your workspace say to deactivate accounts that no longer need access, and it’s the kind of thing a founder never catches, because you stop seeing what’s been there the whole time.
Three things happened in those minutes, and each one maps to an outcome a small team actually cares about. He read before he acted, which only works if you grant real access to email, files and channels. He spotted what had become invisible to us, which needs him to see the workspace member list, not just one channel. And when I told him I don’t want anything proactive, he wrote that into his own job description with hard rules: never send email, never touch the finance sheets, draft everything for my approval. His job is the podcast, the newsletter, the blog and sponsorships, only when I ask. That last part requires you to know what you want before you start, which I’d argue is the real work.
Viktor is the wrong hire if your team doesn’t work in Slack or Teams, or if you aren’t ready to decide what an agent may touch, because he’s built around those channels and around the access you grant him. He also has a web app, but I tested him in Slack, where your team’s conversations give him something to learn from. If your business runs on email threads and a WhatsApp group, I’d start somewhere simpler.
The bigger limitation is mine to admit. Seven minutes is a first impression, not a result. I can tell you he learned the business quickly and asked before acting. I can’t yet tell you what he’s worth over a quarter, what he’ll cost at our usage, or how his drafts hold up on a busy week.
Access is also a real trade-off, and I did this part in the wrong order. To be useful he needs to read your email, your files and your channels, and I connected all three before I’d set a single rule. My rules came after his first question, and they’re instructions he wrote down, not settings that technically block him. Do it the other way around: set up the actual approval controls before you connect anything, keep finance and payment tools out of the first test entirely, and ask the vendor in writing who on your team can see what he learns from your inbox, and what he keeps if you disconnect it.
There are alternatives worth weighing. Slack’s own AI, including Slackbot, may already be in your building, so check which AI features your Slack plan includes, and if you mostly want answers and summaries, start there. Lindy is another AI employee that works inside Slack, so compare the two on your own workflows. And if your gap is one function rather than general help, a specialist like Triple Whale‘s Moby, which Anthony described for media buying, may fit better than a generalist.
Before you connect any AI employee, set aside 15 minutes to start auditing who already has access to your Slack, email and shared drives, then write down what the agent must never do. That’s the part of my first seven minutes you can have for free, today, without buying anything.
Open your Slack member list and look for anyone from a finished project. Slack’s guide to deactivating a member’s account walks you through it. Then do the same for your store: Fastlane’s guide to protecting your Shopify store before BFCM covers reviewing collaborator access and removing accounts from finished projects.
Then decide by how much work actually runs through your Slack, with revenue as a rough guide. If you’re under roughly $500K a year and Slack is quiet, do the audit and skip the hire for now; there isn’t enough there for an agent to learn from. If you’re between $500K and $2M with a small team whose day lives in Slack, test one AI employee with approval controls switched on and draft-only work, the same way a sale-building AI that waits for you to press Save keeps you in control of prices. Above that, bring in whoever owns security before anything gets connected, and use the agent for work that has one right answer while people keep the judgment calls, as Fastlane’s guide to building an efficient ecommerce team suggests.
Most founders I talk to between $500K and $2M don’t need another app. They need someone who learns how the business runs first, then asks before acting. Whether that someone is a person or an AI employee, the rules come first.
An AI employee in Slack is an AI agent that joins your workspace like a teammate, connects to the tools you grant it, and takes on work rather than only answering questions. You message it in channels or direct messages, and it can read context from connected apps such as email and shared drives. Viktor, Lindy and Slack’s own Slackbot all work inside Slack, but they differ in how much access they need and how much work they take on. The useful test is what the agent does before you trust it: whether it learns how your business runs and asks before taking any action you can’t undo.
Giving an AI agent access to your email and Google Drive is a trade-off you should make deliberately, with written rules, not by default. The agent needs that access to be useful, so read the vendor’s security documentation first and decide what it may read, what it may change, and what it must never do. A sensible starting point is draft-only work enforced by the tool’s approval settings, not just written instructions: the agent can prepare emails and documents, but a person approves anything that gets sent, deleted or paid. Leave finance sheets and payment tools out of the first test entirely, and ask the vendor who on your team can see what the agent learns and what it keeps if you disconnect a source.
To remove an old contractor from Slack, a workspace owner or admin deactivates their account from the member list. Open the admin area, go to the people or member management page, click the three dots next to the person, and choose to deactivate the account. Slack signs them out on every device and removes them from all channels, without deleting their past messages or files. While you’re there, check for anyone else from a finished project, then repeat the same review for your Shopify collaborator accounts, your email, and shared drives. On Enterprise plans, deactivation happens at the organization level, so ask whoever owns your Slack org.
A store under $500K a year with a quiet Slack doesn’t need an AI employee yet, because there isn’t enough work flowing through Slack for an agent to learn from. At that stage, the higher-value move is the access audit: remove old contractors, tighten who can reach your email and store admin, and write down the decisions you’d never hand to anyone else. If your team is growing and Slack is getting busy, test one agent with draft-only permissions on repeatable work, such as sorting inbound pitches, before giving it anything that touches customers or money.
