Talking to SAM
How to reach it, what it can read, and what to do with an answer once you have one.
Three ways to reach it
- @-mention it in any channel it's been invited to
- DM it, no invite needed
- Reply in a thread it's already in. It decides whether the reply was meant for it. If you get 👀 and then silence, it judged the message wasn't for it. @-mention it to be sure.
It reads the thread you're in, and the channel's recent history if you ask it to. It is not indexing your Slack.
Sending it files
Attach them to the message. It reads what's in front of it.
| Type | Limit |
|---|---|
| Images | 8 per message, 5 MB each |
| CSV, text, code | 50,000 characters |
.xlsx, PDFs, Slack Lists | Not readable. Export to CSV first |
Anything it skips, it names. A file from earlier in the thread still works. Just refer to it.
While it's working
Priya14:11
@SAM define our ICP from the last 90 days of leads: firmographics, the forms they came through, what they had in common.
SAMApp14:11
Reading 1,204 leads across 6 forms
Working on it.
A status line appears with a Stop button. A stopped turn changes nothing: writes were already parked behind approval cards, so there's nothing half-done to unwind. Once the answer has landed the button is gone, and clicking it says so rather than swapping a delivered answer for "Stopped."
If a question is too big for one go, it offers Run it in the background. Say yes. Background jobs report back in the same thread and are read-only.
When it wants to change something
Anything that isn't read-only parks behind an Approve/Cancel card carrying the finished change. The person who asked, or any Slack workspace admin, can approve.
Editing published content edits the draft. Publishing is a second approval.
Keeping an answer
If the answer is a document rather than a number (an ICP, a positioning cut, a
research write-up), a Save in Vault button appears under it. One click files
it in your Surface Vault as a dated Markdown doc under slack/.
SAMApp14:13
Two segments, not one. 61% of the last 90 days came from 200-1,000 person B2B SaaS, mostly through Demo Request, and they convert at 3x the rest. The second cluster is under 50 people, arrives through the pricing form, and rarely books.
It reads its own Vault before drafting, so saving compounds. Anyone in the workspace can click it: it only ever creates, never overwrites.
Roughly one answer in five carries 👍 / 👎 and a saved 5m · 30m · 2h row. It's sampled deliberately, because buttons under every answer read as being asked to rate a conversation.
Getting better answers
- Name the metric. It defaults to what you literally asked for. Want a rate and a trend? Say so.
- Name the form as it appears in Surface. If nothing matches, it asks which of five you meant rather than guessing.
- Give it source material. Pasted text beats a description of the text.
- Correct it in the thread. Corrections are saved to memory, so you don't earn the same one twice.
More: Prompt library.