Jack Dorsey announced a new workplace chat application called Buzz on July 21, 2026, positioning it as a direct competitor to Slack and GitHub. Built by Dorsey’s company Block — which also operates Square, Cash App, Afterpay, and Tidal — Buzz is a group chat platform designed to place human employees and AI agents in the same conversations.
Dorsey described Buzz on X as “model-agnostic, decentralized, self-sovereign, and open source.” The platform resembles Slack in appearance but adds native AI agent support and the ability to manage GitHub projects from a single workspace. Because the source code is publicly available, developers can customize their own Buzz instance and build features tailored to their team’s specific workflows.
The free desktop app is available now for macOS, Windows, and Linux, with the code uploaded to GitHub. Buzz’s own website notes the platform is in its “early stages,” suggesting teams should weigh that limitation before migrating away from existing tools.
The launch comes as workplaces increasingly rely on AI agents to complete tasks, creating challenges around coordinating work across multiple platforms. Buzz’s stated goal is to consolidate those workflows into one workspace, reducing dependency on separate tools.
Dorsey is not alone in pursuing this space. Paradigm partner and CTO Georgios Konstantopoulos unveiled a similar open source product called Centaur in May 2026, which he describes as a “virtual employee” that operates inside Slack or via an API. Konstantopoulos has argued there is “a lot of room for improvement for agents that live in Slack.”
For newer startups already working with AI agents that have not yet established a presence on Slack, Buzz could be worth evaluating — though its early-stage status may limit its immediate suitability for teams requiring a stable, full-featured platform.
Source: TechCrunch