Best practices for using @Claude

Claude now works alongside your team, under its own account, in the places you already work together. Tag @Claude with a task and it takes it on. The work happens in the thread where everyone can see it, and it keeps going after you've closed your laptop, coming back to you when it's done or when a decision needs you.

This guide covers how to set up your channels, how to write a task that goes well, and how to move from giving @Claude tasks to handing it work that runs on its own.

What makes this Claude different

You may have used Claude in a chat box, or have automations running in your workspace that each handle a specific job. This Claude is different in a few ways:

• The work keeps running after you leave: tag @Claude with a task and close your laptop. The work keeps going, and tasks you've put on a schedule run without anyone there. When you want to check in, reply in the thread from whatever device you're on, and the task continues with everything it already knew. A teammate can do the same while you're out.

• It's collaborative from the start: unlike working in a private chat box, @Claude is in your workspace, ready to take the next step. The whole team is in the thread with Claude from the first message, and anyone can redirect or add to the work. Give it the problems you're already working through together. Everyone sees the same progress, and a reply from any of you counts as direction.

• It works where your context already is: Claude reads the channel's history before you've explained anything, so most of the briefing you'd normally give is already done. When a specific doc, thread, or past decision matters, name it and Claude reads it from there. In a channel devoted to one kind of work, that adds up to a specialist in exactly that work.

• It learns the channel and gets better at the job: corrections and preferences you give to Claude stick. When a result comes back, tell it what you liked and what you'd change, and it saves that for the channel going forward. The Claude in your channel gets better at your channel's specific work over time.

Tips while using @Claude in your workspace

1. Learn what Claude has access to

In a channel, Claude works with the connections your admin set up (your docs, your code, your data, whatever has been connected) plus the channel's own history. Anyone in the channel can continue a task someone else started, and the tools and context are shared.

In your DM, it's just you and Claude. Your personal connections like your calendar and email work there, and only there. In channels Claude uses its own admin-managed accounts, so nothing from your inbox can end up in a channel by accident.

Memory follows the same boundaries. What Claude learns in a public channel is available across your workspace, and what it learns in a private channel or a DM stays in that conversation.

Connections to tools help expand what Claude can do. A couple of connections and Claude is answering questions; connect most of what your team uses and Claude is completing the work. If you're not sure what it can use where you are, ask it: "@Claude what can you access from this channel?" If something you need isn't connected, ask your admin to add it.

2. Work with Claude in public

Do team-relevant work in public channels rather than DMs, when you can. Claude works from the channel's history, so months of decisions, corrections, and examples are available to it before you've given it the first task. Working in public also helps beyond that channel: your teammates can find and reuse what you did, and so can Claude when it's working elsewhere in the workspace.

A channel about one kind of work gives Claude a clear focus. The history and corrections in that channel are what it learns from, so it gets good at exactly that channel's work and your requests get shorter. You stop pasting the doc back in or starting with "for context," because Claude was reading along when the context happened, and you can delegate the tasks specific to your role there.

3. Teach Claude when to respond

By default, Claude in a channel responds when someone tags it. It doesn't act on its own unless you've told it to. That's the right place to start: you tag Claude in with a task, and Claude works on it in the thread.

Set Claude's level of proactivity: you can change how active Claude is in a given channel by telling it in plain words. "Only reply here when someone tags you" or "watch this channel and answer any question you can." A busy feedback channel might want Claude answering everything, because a wrong answer gets corrected and a missed question doesn't. A planning channel might want it quiet except for a scheduled update. If proactive replies aren't available in your channel, your admin can turn them on.

Schedule tasks: when you find yourself tagging Claude for the same thing on the same day each week, tell it to run that on a schedule instead. "Post a digest of decisions and open items every Monday at 9am." Claude runs that in the channel each week without anyone tagging it.

Have it follow up on its own: you're not the only one who can start the conversation. Ask Claude to check back in three days on whether a fix held, or to say something when a thread it's watching goes quiet, and it posts the follow-up without anyone tagging it.

Working with @Claude on a task

Step 1: Pick the task

A task goes well when it has three things: inputs Claude can reach, a goal you've stated, and a result someone can check.

• If you're not sure Claude can reach the inputs, ask it what it can access in this channel before you send the task.
• If the goal is vague, say who the result is for and what they should be able to do with it.
• If you won't be able to tell whether the result is right, add a way to check it, like asking Claude to link its sources.

For a first task, pick something Claude can do from what's already in the conversation: catch you up on the channel since Monday, or pull out who owns the open threads. You'll get a result fast and you can check it yourself. See more use cases of what @Claude can do.

Step 2: Write the request

Brief Claude the way you'd brief a capable new teammate: the goal, why it matters, and where to look. Name the doc, the thread, or the date range if a specific one matters, and ask Claude to link its sources. Leave the steps to Claude; it can read the channel, search the workspace, and use whatever tools are connected.

Step 3: Let Claude work

Claude reacts to your message, posts a short note that it's started, and keeps a checklist updated in the thread. It keeps working without you, and if you're working in a channel, anyone in it can jump in to add context or adjust Claude's plan.

Editing a message you already sent has no effect; send a new reply instead. And a new top-level message starts a new task, so to keep going on this one, stay in its thread, though what Claude remembers about the channel applies in every thread.

Step 4: Review the result

Read Claude's work before you use it, in proportion to what's at stake: skim a summary, read carefully anything going to a customer or changing a system. When something's wrong, say what specifically and ask for the revision in the thread. For anything analytical, ask Claude to take a second pass looking for errors in its first answer. If the same miss keeps happening, open Claude's session to see the steps it took, then tell Claude what to do differently. Claude remembers the correction for the channel, so the next person doesn't hit it.

Giving @Claude more responsibility over time

To get started, tag @Claude in a channel where real work happens and ask it something a teammate would normally answer. If you want a low-stakes place to try things first, make a channel just for that (naming it “your name” and “Claude” works). And if you're not sure what to ask, ask Claude what it can help with where you are.

Once Claude is reliably doing a few things, the next step is widening its responsibility, in addition to one-off tasks. What that looks like in practice:

• Give Claude something to own: not "post a digest on Mondays" but "you're responsible for keeping this channel's open questions answered. Check daily, answer what you can, tag whoever's right for the rest." Claude decides what needs doing each day instead of running a fixed script.
• Let Claude improve itself: at the end of the day, ask it to look back over the channel's threads and write down what it would do differently. Claude finds real improvements when it has time set aside to look; it just doesn't do that on its own unless you ask. After a miss, do the same thing and have Claude save what it learns.
• Ask Claude what's been missed: once in a while, ask Claude what's been raised repeatedly across the channels it's in that nobody's answered, or what looks stalled. Because it can read across its channels, it can see the gaps no single person is looking at.

What makes this possible

A few things run underneath all of the above, and they're worth knowing because they're what makes it safe to hand Claude real work.

• Claude has its own identity: in channels it works under its own account, not yours. Every action it takes is recorded under that account, so there's always an answer to what Claude did and who asked for it.

• Its access is set per channel: your admin decides what Claude can reach in each channel, and being added to a channel is what gives it reach there. That's why the same Claude can open pull requests in an engineering channel and only read the wiki in another. Security and data handling covers how its work is kept separate from everything else.

• Memory belongs to the channel: what Claude remembers is kept with the channel and workspace, not with any one person. Anyone on the team can ask Claude what it remembers there, add to it, or tell it to forget something that's out of date.

If you already use Claude somewhere else

Coming from claude.ai: You can stop collecting all the context yourself. You don't need to paste in the background or re-explain the project each time. Name the thread, the doc, or the channel, and let Claude read it there. And where an answer in chat might hand the work back to you, with @Claude, it can take the next step itself, like opening the draft PR, filing the ticket, or tagging in a teammate, and report back in the thread.

Coming from the earlier Claude app for Slack: @Claude works under its own account with the access your admin sets per channel, remembers corrections for the channel, and takes on multi-step tasks rather than single replies. The FAQ covers the differences, and the Help Center covers what happens to the earlier app.

Learn more

• How @Claude works: memory, identity, and what Claude can access in each place.
• Get started and Good habits: the basics, and how to write tasks that are easy to check.
• @Claude use cases: tasks teams are running today, with example prompts.
• Admin setup guide: connecting tools, scoping access per channel, spend controls.
• What is Claude Tag in the Help Center: plan availability, billing, and who can set it up. For other account questions, see the Help Center home.