Ask @Cranes in Slack

If your team connected Slack to answer when mentioned, mention @Cranes in a permitted channel and it replies in the thread. To set Slack up, see Slack.

Link your Slack account

Cranes answers only people it can match to someone on the team. It matches you by the email on your Slack profile the first time you mention or message it, so most people do nothing.

If your Slack profile uses a different email:

1. In Slack, open your profile, choose More, then Copy member ID.
2. In Cranes, open Settings › People and paste it under You in your team’s Slack.
3. Choose Save.

If Cranes can’t match you, it replies that it can’t find you and says what to do.

What an answer uses

Replies post in the channel’s thread, so they’re as public as the channel.

• Public channel: only the team’s thinking, since anyone in your Slack can read it.
• Private channel: the thinking the channel feeds, plus every group that everyone in the channel belongs to. Cranes checks who is in the channel each time. If someone there can’t read what it feeds, it says so and suggests a direct message.
• Direct message: your own thinking in this team, the team’s, and your groups, saying whose is whose. Only you read the reply, and nothing you send is kept. If you connected Granola, you can ask about your meetings too.

Never the words of entries marked Keep off connected AIs, and never groups kept off connected AIs.

If you name a group or tool that not everyone in the channel may read but you can, Cranes answers with a reply only you can see, and says so.

Every answer ends with whose thinking it drew on, like From the team’s thinking, and Open in Cranes.

Ask it to check your tools

If your team connected Linear, Jira, GitHub, or Notion, ask Cranes to look there:

@Cranes where are we on the onboarding redesign? check Linear and Notion for the latest

It searches only when you ask it to check, find, or look something up, and only tools everyone in the channel may see. It answers from what the team has learned and what it found, says which is which, and links what it cites. A searched answer ends with what it searched for, so you can tell it when it looked for the wrong thing.

When what it finds differs from the team’s thinking, it says so and notes it for the next learning pass. It never changes the team’s thinking on the spot.

Correct it

If an answer is out of date, reply in the thread:

@Cranes that’s not how we do releases anymore, we ship on Thursdays

Cranes keeps your correction in the thinking the channel feeds, for its next learning pass, and says so. It won’t claim it has learned anything. When the channel feeds a group and your correction is about the team’s thinking, it stays in the group, and the group’s members see it under For you on Home to share with the team or keep.

Save a decision

When a thread settles something, ask:

@Cranes save this: we ship behind a flag

The thinking the channel feeds starts learning right away. Cranes says it was saved, not learned.