If your team already uses Slack

Before you start

You need permission to install an app in your Slack workspace. If you do not have it, the person who administers Slack can complete the install and you can use Cook straight afterwards.

Putting it in your Slack

1. Open Settings → Apps → Chat apps. The same window can also open from a small Add Slack bar at the bottom of the sidebar, but that bar is not always shown: it takes turns with other prompts and disappears once you have connected a chat app or dismissed it.

2. The list shows Slack, Discord, Telegram and iMessage. Press Set up on the Slack row.

3. Press Add to Slack. That opens Slack’s own permission screen; approve it there and Cook brings you back on its own.

4. Tick the channels Cook should join. It joins them and introduces itself in each one.

That is the whole install. You do not have to add Cook to channels by hand afterwards, though you can invite it to more at any time.

The first time you open it

Open Cook’s Messages tab in Slack and the top shows “Hi, I’m Cook. Start with one of these:” over up to four suggested prompts. The first is always “What can you do here?”; the rest come from your workspace’s own starter prompts. Tap one and it is sent as your message.

The first time a teammate opens that tab with nothing in it, Cook sends them a short welcome once: what to send it, how @Cook works in channels, the chat commands below, and that it can remind them later. The person who installed Cook gets the install welcome instead.

Asking it for something

Send Cook a direct message, or write @Cook in any channel it has joined. Use plain English. There are no slash commands; the only commands are the four short ones under Chat commands.

While Cook works

A chef mark appears on your message the moment Cook starts, so you know it received you before any words come back.

Where Cook is installed as a Slack agent app, Slack then shows its own “working” line under the thread, with Slack’s stop button. Each step Cook takes (searching, reading, writing) appears as a card in the thread while it runs and is ticked off when done. The stop button stops Cook, the same as sending !stop.

Where that is not available, Cook posts one progress message in your direct message instead and keeps it updated with the time and the steps so far. In a channel thread it shows the working line or nothing, so the channel is not filled with progress posts.

The answer itself is posted as its own message in the thread under your message. If you asked in a channel and the answer took more than a minute, it starts with an @mention of you, so you are notified.

Chat commands

Put one of these anywhere in a message, as a word of its own:

Command	What it does
!stop	Stops what Cook is doing in that conversation. Your message gets 🛑 and Cook says “Stopped.” Anything it had half-written is not sent. With nothing running, the 🛑 is the only reply.
!fast	Answers this one message on your workspace’s fast model. Your message wears ⚡ until the reply lands.
!deep	Answers this one message on your workspace’s stronger model. Your message wears 🧠 until the reply lands.
!mute	In a channel thread, Cook stops replying there (see below). Your message gets 🔇.

!fast and !deep apply to that one reply only; the next message runs on the normal model again. The reply ends with a small line naming the model it ran on, for example ”⚡ Fast reply · Claude Haiku 5.5”. If the command would not change the model, there is no line. Using !fast and !deep together cancels both.

The commands are taken out before Cook reads your words, so “!fast what is on today?” is answered as “what is on today?”. A command inside a code span, a code block or a > quote is left alone: that is someone else’s text, not a command.

Where Cook replies, and where it stays quiet

You do this	Cook does this
Send it a direct message	Replies every time.
Write @Cook in a channel it has joined	Replies in a thread under your message.
Post in a channel without mentioning it	Does not reply. Messages from people who can use Cook are kept as context for the next time it is mentioned there.
Write in a group DM that includes it	Replies only when you @Cook.
@Cook in a thread it is already in	Replies right away.
Reply without a mention in a thread Cook started	Reads it at once and answers only if you are talking to it, asking it something, or giving feedback on its work.
Reply without a mention in a thread that began with @Cook	Waits for 30 seconds of quiet, reads the new replies together, then decides the same way.
Reply in a thread Cook was never part of	Does not reply.

Messages from other bots are ignored unless a bot writes @Cook in a channel.

Quiet, please. Send !mute in a thread, or react with 🏁 to one of Cook’s messages there, and Cook stops replying in that thread (it says so once). It keeps reading for context; @Cook in the thread brings it back.

Edits. If you edit or delete a message in a thread Cook is following, it does not reply to the change, but it sees it next time.

Channel rules. Tell Cook in a channel how to behave there — for example “@Cook in this channel, always answer in German” — and it keeps that as a standing instruction for the channel (up to 10 short lines), applied every time it is mentioned there.

What comes back

• Long answers lead with a short summary as the first message; the details follow underneath in the thread.
• Tables arrive as real Slack tables. A table too big for Slack (over 100 rows, 20 columns or 10,000 characters) arrives as text.
• Numbers arrive as a card built from Slack’s own components: real text you can select, not a screenshot.
• Documents arrive as real Slack file attachments you can forward — Word files, spreadsheets, slide decks and PDFs.
• Long research is written up and filed in your Drive, with a link in the thread rather than pages of text.

Sending it files

Attach files to a direct message or to an @Cook message in a channel, with or without words. Cook reads them the same way it reads files you upload in the app:

• Images are looked at.
• Text files such as .csv, .md and .txt are read in full.
• Other documents, such as PDFs, are opened and read.

Each file can be up to 25 MB. A larger file is skipped, and Cook is told it was skipped. Up to 10 images are read per message; with more, Cook reads the 10 most recent and is told how many it left out.

When Cook needs an app connected

If a request needs an app your workspace has not connected, Cook’s reply carries a 🔌 Connect button for that app. It opens the app’s page in Cook, where you connect it.

Once the connection is made, Cook picks the request back up on its own, in the same thread. You do not need to ask again. It does this for requests made in the last 24 hours, waits if Cook is still busy in that conversation, and does not start if the workspace is out of credits.

Approving what it proposes

Anything that spends money or leaves the building — sending an email, changing ad spend, posting to a channel — arrives as a card with Approve, Request changes and Reject buttons. Press one and it runs exactly as proposed; the request is frozen when the card is created, so it cannot change underneath you.

When a proposal is a list, the card carries tick boxes. Untick anything you do not want, then approve, and only the ticked items run.

Once someone decides, the buttons are replaced by the outcome and who chose it — for example ”✅ Approved by Sam” or ”❌ Rejected by Sam” — so the card cannot be pressed twice.

Who may press depends on your workspace’s own roles. An owner can run some things without a card at all; a teammate’s request routes to whoever is allowed to sign it off. You set that in Settings → Team → AI approvals.

Always approve this tool. A card for a single tool action can also carry this button. It approves the card now and changes the approval policy so later calls of that tool run without a card. Only a workspace owner or admin can turn it on; anyone else who presses it approves this card once, and Cook tells them the rule was not saved. Some actions always need a card and cannot be set this way. You can change it back in Settings → Team → AI approvals.

Reminders and follow-ups

Ask “remind me Friday at 4pm to send the report” or “check back on this tomorrow morning”, and Cook comes back in the same thread at that time. Times are read in your own time zone.

• You can ask it to skip the reminder if someone replies in the conversation first.
• Up to 8 reminders can be waiting in one conversation, up to a year ahead. A new reminder is added; it does not replace the earlier ones.
• Ask “what reminders do I have here?” to list them, and ask Cook to cancel one or all of them.

For work that repeats, ask for a routine instead.

Check-ins Cook sends on its own

When Slack is connected, Cook sets up three routines that send a direct message to the person who connected the workspace:

• Daily digest, each morning.
• Heartbeat, at 9:00 and 15:00 each day. Cook reads the channels it can see and its tasks, and writes only if something needs attention — an unanswered question, a slipping date, something it could take on. Most check-ins send nothing. A check-in is also skipped when nothing new has been said to Cook since the last one.
• Workflow discovery, once a week. Cook looks over the last two weeks for repeated work and suggests up to 3 things it could take over, each with a question for you. It builds nothing until you say yes.

They are ordinary routines: you can edit or pause them wherever your routines are listed, or reply to a heartbeat asking Cook to check in less often or stop. If nobody has messaged Cook in this Slack for 21 days, the heartbeat and workflow discovery skip their runs until someone does.

Credits

Ask Cook in chat how many credits are left this period, what has used them, or the daily average. Owners and admins also see a breakdown by teammate. This is not available in conversations with your clients.

When the workspace has used 70% and then 90% of this period’s credits, Cook sends a direct message to each owner and admin who uses Cook in Slack. No alert is sent if the workspace is on automatic top-up. If no message can be delivered, the alert appears as a notification in Cook instead.

What Cook can do in your Slack

Besides answering you, Cook can work in the rest of your Slack under its own name:

Cook can	Needs a card
List channels, read a channel’s or thread’s history, search recent messages	No
Look up a person, open a group DM	No
Add, remove and read reactions	No
List a channel’s bookmarks	No
Post a message, edit or delete its own messages	Yes
Join or leave a channel, invite people to a channel	Yes
Add a bookmark	Yes
Create or edit a canvas	Yes

The cards follow your approval policy like any other. If Cook was installed before one of these was added, Slack may refuse it; Cook then says the workspace needs to reinstall Cook to grant it.

Where the request turns up

The card goes to the person who has to decide, as a direct message, in the chat app they used most recently. If Cook cannot message that person directly, the card appears in the conversation where it was proposed instead, and anyone there who is allowed to decide can press it.

If you have two Slack workspaces

If your organization has connected more than one Slack workspace, a card always goes to the workspace you were talking in, and can only be pressed there.

Who can use Cook in Slack

An admin sets this in Cook → Connect, on the Slack workspace’s card:

• DM access and Group access: Pairing lets in only approved people, Everyone lets in everyone except the people you block. Admins are never blocked.
• Slack guests: guests are kept out unless you allow them. You can allow all guests or specific ones, in all channels or specific ones. With specific channels, guests are refused everywhere else, direct messages included.
• Slack Connect channels (shared with another company): turn Cook on or off in all of them. For each one, choose who can prompt Cook (members only, or external people too), and whether Cook’s thread replies and new posts go out at once or as a preview first. A preview is shown only to the person who asked, with Post here and Reject; only Post here makes it visible to the channel.
• Who Cook can DM: anyone, or only specific people. Admins can always be messaged, and anyone can always message Cook.

Someone who is not allowed gets a message only they can see, saying why. Deactivated accounts are ignored.

If something does not arrive

• Cook does not answer in a channel: it has not been invited to that channel. Invite it, or open Settings → Apps → Chat apps, press Manage on the Slack row, and pick the channel.
• A teammate is refused: they see a private message saying why. If they have not linked their Slack account yet, they open Settings → Apps → Chat apps, press Get my pairing code under Link your Slack account, and send that code to Cook as a direct message in Slack within 15 minutes. An admin can also approve them in Connect.
• Cook’s replies in a shared channel are only visible to you: that channel is set to preview first. Press Post here.

If your team uses Discord instead

Cook works the same way in Discord. See If your team already uses Discord.