Jack Dorsey’s Buzz aims to replace Slack with an AI-agent chat workspace

Jack Dorsey on Tuesday unveiled Buzz, an open-source workplace chat app designed to bring employees and their AI agents into the same conversations and reduce dependence on Slack and GitHub. The new platform matters because it reflects a broader push to build software around AI agents, not just human users, as startups and enterprises look for a single place to coordinate work.

Buzz is being positioned as a Slack-style team messenger with a more ambitious pitch: combine group chat, project coordination and agent-based automation inside one environment. Dorsey said the app is model-agnostic, decentralized, self-sovereign and open source, and the project appears to be backed by Block, the company he co-founded and now runs alongside products including Square, Cash App, Afterpay and Tidal.

The launch arrives at a moment when AI tools are increasingly being wired into day-to-day workflows. Instead of treating AI as a separate assistant, Buzz tries to make agents feel like full participants in team work, with the ability to help manage tasks, handle coding-related collaboration and sit alongside people in the same workspace.

What is Buzz and why is Jack Dorsey launching it now?

Buzz is a new group chat platform for teams that aims to unify human collaboration and AI-agent activity in one desktop app. Dorsey’s timing is notable because workplace software is in the middle of a transition: companies are experimenting with AI agents, but those agents are often bolted onto existing tools rather than designed into the core of the product.

That creates friction. Teams may use one system for messaging, another for code repositories, another for project management and yet another for AI helpers. Buzz tries to cut across those layers by giving teams a shared environment where people and agents can work together more naturally.

According to the product’s website and Dorsey’s announcement, the app is intended to reduce reliance on Slack and GitHub by blending the functions of both into a single workflow. The software currently looks familiar to anyone who has used a modern team chat tool, but with AI-native features built in from the start.

Dorsey described Buzz as a platform for “teams of people and agents of all sizes” and said the goal is to reduce dependency on Slack and GitHub while keeping the system open source and self-sovereign.

How does Buzz differ from Slack?

Buzz is trying to do more than compete on messaging. Its main differentiation is that it treats AI agents as first-class participants in team conversations and workflows, rather than optional integrations layered on afterward.

In a conventional Slack setup, AI features are typically added through bots, apps or external services. Buzz instead aims to make agent activity native to the workspace. That means a team can talk, assign work, manage code-related tasks and coordinate with automated helpers in the same interface.

The company also says the app is open source, which gives developers the ability to inspect the code, modify it and run their own instance. That is a meaningful distinction from the proprietary model used by most major workplace chat products.

Why open source matters for workplace AI

Open source is important here because many organizations want more control over how AI systems behave inside sensitive work environments. Teams may want to self-host, customize data handling rules or change how agents interact with internal workflows.

For startups especially, that flexibility can be attractive. Young companies often move quickly, adopt different AI models over time and need tools that can change with the team. A product that is model-agnostic may let them swap in the AI engine they prefer without rebuilding the rest of the collaboration stack.

• Teams can customize the interface and workflows.
• Developers can deploy their own instance of the software.
• Organizations may keep more control over data and security.
• Different AI models can be plugged in over time.

What does model-agnostic, decentralized and self-sovereign mean?

Those labels suggest Buzz is being designed with flexibility and control in mind. Model-agnostic means it should work with different AI models rather than depending on one provider. Decentralized suggests teams may be able to run the software in a distributed or self-managed way. Self-sovereign implies users and organizations retain more ownership over their environment and data.

In practical terms, those ideas matter most for companies that do not want to lock their operations to a single vendor. A workplace platform built around AI agents can become deeply embedded in daily operations, so the ability to self-host or customize the system could be a selling point for security-conscious businesses.

How is Buzz supposed to work in daily team use?

Buzz is designed to merge several common workstreams into one window. That includes chat, AI-agent assistance and GitHub-related coordination. The product’s pitch is that rather than bouncing between separate apps, a team can keep conversations, tasks and code-linked workflows together.

The result is meant to be less fragmented collaboration. For example, a product team might discuss a feature in chat, ask an AI agent to prepare a summary or draft a task list, and then coordinate the implementation side without leaving the same environment.

That idea aligns with a wider shift in software design. As companies build more AI-powered systems, they are starting to ask not just what those tools can do, but where those tools should live. Buzz’s answer is that agents belong directly inside the team workspace.

Who else is trying to build AI-native Slack alternatives?

Dorsey is not the only executive betting that the next major collaboration platform will be built around agents. Paradigm partner and CTO Georgios Konstantopoulos recently introduced Centaur, another open source workplace tool aimed at AI-enhanced team communication.

Konstantopoulos has described Centaur as a kind of virtual employee that can operate inside Slack or through an API. His view is that there is still substantial room for improvement in how agents function in team settings, especially for companies that need more control and better security than a cloud-only tool may offer.

Konstantopoulos has argued that enterprise users will want to self-host agent tools for security and control, while still making them usable inside Slack-like workflows.

That broader competition suggests the market is moving beyond simple chat automation. The new battle is over whether AI agents should live inside existing software or whether entirely new workspaces should be built around them from the start.

Why startups may be the first real audience for Buzz

Buzz may be most appealing to newer companies that have not already built their workflows around Slack. Those teams may be more willing to test a fresh collaboration system if it helps them centralize work and adapt quickly as their use of AI grows.

Established companies, by contrast, often face a much harder migration problem. Their internal processes, archives, permissions and integrations are already tied to current tools, which makes switching expensive and risky. Buzz itself acknowledges that it is still in early stages, so a wholesale migration would be premature for most mature organizations.

Still, the product could be a preview of where some startups are headed. If AI agents become routine collaborators, teams may want tools that assume those agents are part of the workflow instead of treating them as add-ons.

What are the main reasons teams might try it?

The main reason is convenience: combining chat, code coordination and agents in one place could save time. Other reasons include openness, customizability and the ability to self-host for control over data and security.

1. Fewer context switches between tools.
2. Native support for AI-agent participation.
3. Potentially better fit for developer-heavy teams.
4. More flexibility through open-source deployment.

How early is Buzz, and where can people get it?

Buzz is available now as a free desktop app for macOS, Windows and Linux, and its code has been posted to GitHub. But the company is careful not to oversell its readiness. The product is still early, which means teams should view it as a test bed rather than a fully proven replacement for entrenched workplace software.

That stage of development matters because collaboration tools are hard to displace once they are embedded in company culture. The software has to be reliable, secure and easy enough for entire organizations to adopt. Buzz will need to demonstrate all three if it wants to compete seriously with Slack or GitHub-centered workflows.

Even so, the release gives Dorsey a foothold in a crowded market where AI-native productivity software is becoming one of the hottest categories in enterprise tech. The value proposition is not just that the product uses AI, but that it reimagines the workplace around AI agents as part of the team.

What this launch signals about the future of work software

Buzz is part of a bigger industry shift: software companies are redesigning products around agents that can act, not just answer questions. That shift could transform how teams communicate, assign work and manage technical projects.

If the trend continues, the next generation of workplace software may look less like a chat app with bots and more like a shared operating system for people and machines. In that world, the difference between a teammate and an agent could matter less than whether the tool can help the team move faster, stay secure and keep work organized.

For now, Buzz is an ambitious entry from one of the most closely watched founders in tech. It is too early to know whether it will win users away from established platforms, but the announcement underlines a clear market thesis: the workplace chat app of the future may need to be built for both humans and AI agents from day one.

Timeline of Buzz and competing AI-workplace moves

As the enterprise software race shifts toward AI-native tools, Buzz gives Block a chance to shape how teams work with agents rather than merely around them. Whether the product becomes a major Slack rival or a prototype for the next generation of collaboration software, it is already part of a larger conversation about the future of workplace communication.