Connections and plugins decide what Claude can do; instructions and memory shape how it does it.
Settings admins control
Access and organization-wide behavior are set atclaude.ai/admin-settings/claude-tag, per scope (a scope is a channel, a workspace, or your whole organization), so the same agent can work differently in different channels. Most controls below are Owner-only.
Channel connections are separate from personal connectors
An Owner configures Claude’s connections, plugins, and skills, and they apply per scope. They are separate from the connectors, skills, or MCP servers an individual user has set up in their own claude.ai or Claude Desktop account. A user’s personal connectors are not available to Claude in a channel, and the channel’s connections are not listed among that user’s personal connectors in claude.ai. To give Claude access to a tool that is not in the built-in connection list, including a custom MCP server, see add a custom connection.Change behavior from the channel
Everything in the table below is open to channel members, with no admin involved.
Changes in the table above are saved to channel memory; verify one stuck by asking what it remembers.
Members can also tailor how Claude works in the channel from the Configure link in the footer of any Claude reply. The link opens a claude.ai page where anyone in the channel who is also a member of your Claude organization can edit settings for that channel, unless an admin has restricted editing to admins. The Channel instructions field on that page holds standing guidance that outranks memory. See configure Claude for a channel.
Choose the model for a scope
Each scope carries a Default model setting in its Advanced section, alongside the environment and guest controls. It sets the model new channel sessions in that scope start on; the options are drawn from the models available to your organization, such as Opus and Sonnet models. A scope without its own setting inherits from its parent, and a channel’s setting overrides its workspace’s. The Inherit option shows which model the scope resolves to. To keep sessions on a model you chose, set a specific model at the organization scope rather than leaving the setting unset; every scope without an override then follows it. The setting applies to new sessions; threads already underway keep the model they started with. The footer of each Claude reply in Slack names the model that handled it, so you can confirm what a scope is running. Channel members can also change the model from Slack, with no admin involved. Asking Claude in a thread switches that thread, and asking it to make a model the channel default changes what new threads in the channel start on. See choose the model Claude Tag uses.Models your organization allows
Claude Tag’s model lists come from the models your organization makes available for Claude Code, set in the Claude admin console, leaving out any that Claude Tag doesn’t support. A model you see in Claude Code can be absent in Slack for that reason. The allowed list applies in two places.- Model lists in Slack. The models Claude offers when someone asks it to switch, and the model selector for direct messages, show only allowed models. Claude declines a request to switch to a model outside the list.
- Configured defaults. If your organization also enforces the policy on defaults and a workspace or channel’s Default model isn’t allowed by your organization’s Claude Code model policy, Claude declines to start the session and posts a notice in the thread asking the requester to contact an admin. A model excluded by your organization’s plan entitlements works differently. Claude starts the session on a fallback model the plan includes, and declines only when the plan excludes every fallback. The footer of the first reply names the model that served it, so check there to see which model the session started on.
Auto mode allow rules
Sessions run in auto mode, where Claude’s permission checker reviews each action Claude is about to take and can flag or stop it. When you add an auto mode allow rule to a scope, you pre-approve one action in that scope’s sessions, so Claude runs it there without the checker stopping it. The checker keeps reviewing every other action. A rule is a plain sentence that describes work you approve in the scope, such as “Deploying to our staging cluster from a session in this channel is a normal, approved workflow.” To add one:- On
claude.ai/admin-settings/claude-tag, open the Slack tab under Claude Tag’s access and find the scope you want to change (Default Slack access, a workspace, or a channel). - Open the scope’s Advanced section and find Auto mode allow rules, below the Default model setting.
- Select Add rule and write the rule as one plain sentence.
- Limits: a scope holds up to 50 rules, and each rule can be up to 1,024 characters
- Inheritance: rules you set on a workspace or on Default Slack access (the organization-wide root) carry down to the channels beneath, the way custom instructions stack. A channel’s own rules add to those and never replace them, so put a rule on a single channel’s scope to pre-approve an action there without changing any other channel.
- Access: you edit the list with the same admin access as the scope’s other Advanced settings
Settings no one can change
- The Claude app’s name, @-handle, and avatar in Slack are the same in every workspace; there is no rename or rebrand setting.
Related resources
- Settings map: every settings surface, including spend limits and personal connectors
- What Claude Tag remembers: how channel instructions are stored, shared, and corrected
- Good habits for working with Claude Tag: phrasings that make recurring output consistent
- How agent identity works: why access is set per channel