Jack Dorsey just launched a new workplace chat app called Buzz, and he’s aiming it straight at Slack and GitHub. According to TechCrunch AI, the Twitter and Block co-founder announced the product on Tuesday, pitching it as a group chat platform where humans and their AI agents work in the same conversations. Dorsey described it on X as “model-agnostic, decentralized, self-sovereign, and open source.”
This isn’t a solo side project. TechCrunch AI reports that Buzz was built by Dorsey’s company Block, the same outfit behind Square, Cash App, Afterpay, and Tidal. That backing matters. It means Buzz has real engineering muscle behind it, not just a founder’s weekend curiosity.
What stands out here is the timing. Startups are leaning harder on AI agents to get work done, but those agents tend to live scattered across different tools. Buzz’s whole pitch is pulling those workflows into one window.
What Buzz Does
Buzz looks a lot like Slack, but with a few key differences baked in:
- Native AI agents sit inside your team conversations, not bolted on through a separate integration.
- GitHub project management runs from the same window, so developers don’t have to jump between apps.
- Open source code means teams can customize their own Buzz instance to fit their specific workflows.
- Self-hosting and build-your-own features are on the table. If a team needs something new, they have full access to the source code to build and deploy it themselves.
That last point is the real differentiator. Most workplace chat tools lock you into whatever the vendor decides to ship. Buzz hands teams the keys.
How It Compares
Dorsey isn’t the only one chasing an AI-native answer to Slack. TechCrunch AI notes that Paradigm partner and CTO Georgios Konstantopoulos recently unveiled a similar open source product called Centaur, which he calls a “virtual employee” that runs either inside Slack or through an API.
Konstantopoulos framed the opportunity clearly. “There’s a lot of room for improvement for agents that live in Slack and can do more work than just coding for teams,” he wrote on X. “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.”
So there’s a split in approach. Centaur meets teams where they already are, inside Slack. Buzz asks them to move to a new home entirely. Both bet on self-hosting and agent-native design, but they’re solving the migration problem in opposite ways.
Availability and the Catch
Buzz’s free desktop app is available now for macOS, Windows, and Linux, and the code is already up on GitHub. Free and open source is a strong opening move for winning over developers.
But there’s a caveat worth taking seriously. Buzz admits it’s in its “early stages,” and TechCrunch AI cautions that porting your whole team over right now probably isn’t wise. For newer startups running AI agents without an established Slack footprint, Buzz is worth a look. For established teams, it’s more of a watch-and-wait.
Why It Matters
This is significant because it signals where workplace software is heading. The question is no longer whether AI agents belong in your team chat. It’s who controls them, where they run, and how much a company can customize the tools its agents live in. Dorsey is betting the answer is open source and self-sovereign, and Block has the resources to push that bet hard.
Whether Buzz can pull teams away from an entrenched giant like Slack is a much taller order. Early-stage tools rarely dethrone incumbents overnight. But with agents becoming a core part of how startups operate, the fight for that workspace is just getting started. You can find the full details at the original source.