Multiplayer Agents: AI Employees, Poisoned Plugins, Retired GPTs

“Power corresponds to the human ability not just to act but to act in concert.” – Hannah Arendt

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❓ What You’ll Learn

• Why are teams giving tasks to one shared AI agent?
• Whose permissions should a shared agent use when anyone can ask it to act?
• Which companies outside tech already pay for a shared agent?
• Where can a small team still win once Slack bundles a shared agent in?
  

💎 Why It Matters

AI agents are moving out of private chats into team channels.

🔍 Problem

Your team has more work than people.

Each task waits in line until someone is free to do it.

💡 Solution

Teams tag a shared AI agent that starts tasks right away.

🏁 Players

AI Coworkers

• Viktor • AI coworker a whole workspace shares.
• Dust • Company agents any member calls in Slack.
• Lindy • One teammate shared across the team.

Workspace Agents

• Slackbot • Slack’s own agent, piloting in channels.
• Microsoft Teams channel agent • Copilot agent for one Teams channel.
• Atlassian Rovo • Answers help channels as a bot account.

Coding Agents in Slack

• Slack Code • Code channels where teams steer agents.
• GitHub Copilot • Shared coding sessions started from Slack.
• Devin • Coding agent teammates tag in threads.

Self-Hosted Agents

• OpenClaw • Open-source agent for your team’s chats.
• qm • YC’s open-source multiplayer agent for work.
• Hermes Agent • Nous Research’s agent for chat apps.

Agent Chat Apps

• Buzz • Block’s workspace where agents are members.
• Macro • Workspace where agents inherit asker permissions.
• Mantle Chat • Team channels where you tag any model.

Group Chat Agents

• Shapes • Group chats where AI joins friends.
• Jarvie • iMessage sidekick that remembers the group.
• ChatGPT group chats • ChatGPT inside a chat with friends.
  

🔮 Predictions

• Most team agents will bill one company credit pool with a spending cap per person.
  • ChatGPT Business sets per-person credit limits on one shared workspace balance.
  • Notion lets admins cap member credit spend.
  • Lindy moved to per-person shared credits.
• Friend and family group chats will increasingly add AI as a member.
  • Instinct added agents to group chats for carpools and trip plans.
  • Shapes reported 400,000+ monthly users for AI group chats.
• Non-engineers will ship more product fixes by tagging an agent in the team chat.
  • epilot’s product managers, designers and support staff merged 40 PRs in 60 days by tagging Claude in Slack.
  • Slack built Slack Code so product managers and designers can steer coding agents in a channel.
    

☁️ Opportunities

• Sell agencies an AI assistant that answers clients in shared Slack channels.
  • Pylon answers customers in shared channels and reported 158% net revenue retention.
  • Microsoft’s channel agent stops answering when guests join.
• Set up a shared agent that keeps a small company’s data and passwords on computers the company owns.
  • Installers charge $1,200 to $2,600 to set up the free agent OpenClaw plus about $200 a month to maintain it.
  • Viktor starts at $50 a month. OpenClaw keeps memory on hardware, so the agent keeps what it learned when the team switches AI models.
• Launch a shared agent that answers from course material in paid Discord communities.
  • Paid Discord operators need course-grounded answers: Discord community engagement.
  • AstrBot runs one group-chat agent.
  • No lab ships a shared agent on Discord.
• Launch a group-chat agent for one kind of group, like parents sharing school carpools or friends planning a trip.
  • Jarvie raised $8.3M for an agent in iMessage groups.
  • Series raised a $5.1M pre-seed for an AI social network in iMessage.
    

🏔️ Risks

• Poisoned Plugins • Vet each plugin, since a ClawHavoc skill runs with the team’s keys.
• Model Lock-In • Pick a shared agent that can switch AI models when one company raises prices.
• Runaway Spend • Cap each person so one heavy user can’t drain the team’s credits.
  

🔑 Key Lessons

• Decide whose permissions the agent uses before you pick a vendor. Claude Tag uses its own permissions and OpenTag uses the asker’s.
• Keep the team’s memory in files you hold, so switching vendors costs 1 week.
  

🔥 Hot Takes

• Slack is the new prompt box. Teams learn AI by watching each other tag it.
• The org chart now has a bot handle. Shared agents get their own name in Slack.
  

😠 Haters

“Anyone in the channel could ask the bot for files they shouldn’t see.”
Since an agent with its own login can show people files they aren’t allowed to open, pick one that uses the asker’s permissions, like OpenTag or WorkOS’s Atlas.

“We tried Slack bots in 2016. Nobody used them.”
Those bots posted alerts and teams muted them. Today’s agents finish the work: the Slack coworker Viktor hit a $15M yearly revenue rate3 months after launch.

🔗 Links

1. The Multiplayer AI Manifesto • 5 principles for team agents.
2. AI Agents in Action: Brex • How Brex shipped a named customer agent and cut answer time 90%.
3. Introducing Buzz: Where Humans and Agents Work Together • Block’s case for agents as channel members, not one person’s assistant.

📈 What else?

Trends PRO #0186: Multiplayer Agents has more insights.

What you’ll get:

• 56 Players (211% more)
• 8 Predictions (167% more)
• 8 Opportunities (100% more)
• 5 Risks (67% more)
• 4 Key Lessons (100% more)
• 4 Hot Takes (100% more)
• 9 Links (200% more)

With Trends Pro you’ll learn:

• (📈 Pro) Who raised $5.1M to build an AI social network in iMessage?
• (📈 Pro) Who raised $60M to decide what an agent may do for each person?
• (📈 Pro) Which startup joined Meta 8 months after launching a multiplayer agent?
• (📈 Pro) Which developer platform now blocks any agent tool missing from a company’s allowlist?
• (📈 Pro) Which startup turns construction crews’ WhatsApp chats into a daily site report?
• (📈 Pro) Which AI lab warns its team bot can use any teammate’s secrets?
• And much more…

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