Jack Dorsey, the co-founder of Twitter and Block, unveiled a new application on Tuesday named Buzz. Designed as a rival to platforms like Slack and GitHub, Buzz serves as a group chat tool for the workplace, bringing together humans and their AI agents in shared conversations. Dorsey posted on X that Buzz is "model-agnostic, decentralized, self-sovereign, and open source." This initiative appears to extend beyond a mere personal project for Dorsey. According to its official website, Buzz was developed by Dorsey’s company Block, which also oversees products such as Square, Cash App, Afterpay, and Tidal.

As startups increasingly rely on AI agents to handle tasks, it can become difficult for employees to collaborate effectively across different platforms. Buzz’s key advantage is its ability to combine multiple workflows into a single workspace. The interface closely resembles Slack, but it includes built-in AI agents and the capability to manage GitHub projects from the same window. Because the platform is open source, developers can tailor their own Buzz instance to better suit their team’s specific needs and workflows. If a team requires a new feature, they can build and deploy it independently, thanks to full access to the source code.

Dorsey is not the only entrepreneur pursuing AI-driven alternatives or enhancements to Slack. Georgios Konstantopoulos, a partner and CTO at Paradigm, recently introduced a similar open source product called Centaur. He describes it as a "virtual employee" that operates either within Slack or through an API. "There’s a lot of room for improvement for agents that live in Slack and can do more work than just coding for teams. In the enterprise setting, this means that you’ll want to self-host for security and control, and you want people to use it in Slack," Konstantopoulos wrote on X.

For newer startups that utilize AI agents and have not yet established a strong presence on Slack, Buzz—or its competitors—might be worth exploring. However, Buzz acknowledges that it is still in its "early stages," so it may not be advisable to migrate your entire team just yet. The free desktop version of Buzz is currently available for macOS, Windows, and Linux, and the app’s code has been uploaded to GitHub.