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Pair, Launch and Check Claude Tag in Slack

By Nigel Guy · 7 min read

Most teams treat Claude Tag as a chatbot they install: add the app, tell everyone to type @Claude, see what happens. That skips the part that matters. In a shared channel Claude is not acting as whoever tagged it. It acts under an identity of its own, with access an owner chose beforehand, and the work is billed to your organisation. If you launch before deciding that access and that spend, you get a teammate with no job description and an open tab.

Claude Tag is Anthropic's Slack-based way of working with Claude. It was announced on 23 June 2026 and, per the Help Centre, replaced the earlier Claude in Slack experience on 3 August 2026. It is in beta, so menus and limits may move. Check the linked docs if anything below differs on your screen.

Before you start

Cost: there is no per-seat charge for Claude in Slack. Channel work is billed by usage against a balance you fund. The monthly limit presets in setup are $500, $1,000, $2,500 and $5,000 (the $2,500 one is preselected; about £1,900 at time of writing, so check the £ figure on your invoice), plus Unlimited and Custom. Slack users do not each need a Claude seat for channel work.

The three decisions

1. Who may use it. Organization settings > Claude Tag > Member Access has three modes: anyone in the Slack workspace, any member of your Claude organisation, or only members whose role allows it. The role option is Enterprise only.
2. What it can reach. Setup connects Claude to Slack and nothing else. Anything further comes from an Access bundle, which is a named set of connections, repositories, plugins and instructions, attached to the organisation, a workspace or a channel. Tenable's security write-up stresses the catch: a bundle on a public channel is available to anyone who can join that channel, so keep sensitive access in private channels.
3. How much it may spend. Pick a monthly cap now. You can also set per-channel limits later, and admins get alerts at 75% and 95% of a limit.

Step 1 — Pair the workspace

1. Open claude.ai/admin-settings/claude-tag and click Start setup (Resume setup if you began earlier). If you see View setup guide and Go to chat instead, your account cannot run setup.
2. Click Add the Claude app, then Add to Slack on the Slack Marketplace listing, and approve the permissions. On Enterprise Grid this takes two Slack actions; see the workspaces page in the docs.
3. In Slack, open any channel and run /invite @Claude. Then send @Claude connect as a new message with no other text.
4. Claude replies with a code only you can see. It works once and expires after 15 minutes, so have the owner and the Slack admin online together.
5. Paste it into Paste the pairing code and click Pair workspace. Your workspace name appears after Connected to.

If the Slack admin is someone else, the setup page includes a ready-made message to send them.

Step 2 — Fund it and launch

1. If a Buy usage credits step appears (card payment in US dollars, no existing credits), enter an amount and click Buy now, or Skip and buy later at claude.ai/admin-settings/usage. Check the £ amount your card issuer actually charges.
2. On Launch Claude Tag, choose the monthly spend limit unless the buy step already appeared. In that case set it afterwards at claude.ai/admin-settings/usage/claude-tag.
3. Select at least one public channel, your pilot.
4. Decide on Let members know they can now tag Claude. It is on by default and sends every workspace member a DM. Turn it off if you are not ready for the whole company.
5. Click Launch Claude Tag. Your choices on this screen are not saved until you do. Mentions before launch get a notice starting "Claude isn't on in this channel yet".

Step 3 — Give Claude its own access

Do this one tool at a time.

1. GitHub: Claude uses the Claude GitHub App. Only an owner of your GitHub organisation can install it. Grant specific repositories, not everything.
2. Other tools: create a mailbox for Claude (for example claude@yourcompany.example.com), invite it to the tool as a member with the narrowest role, ideally read-only, sign in as Claude, create an API key, then add it as a connection inside an Access bundle on the Claude Tag admin page. A service account, where the tool offers one, is better than a mailbox.
3. Attach the bundle to your pilot channel only, via Access bundles in the admin page's Slack tab.

The payoff is auditability. Claude's actions appear in each tool's own log under its own account, and you can cut it off without touching anyone's login.

Step 4 — Verify in the pilot channel

Paste these in order, each in a fresh thread, because a thread started before you connected a tool will not know about it.

@Claude summarize what this channel decided this week and list any open questions

Passed when Claude replies in a thread under your message, ending with a footer naming the model and a Configure link.

@Claude what can you access from this channel?

Passed when the reply lists exactly the tools you connected, and nothing you did not.

For a first real task, use a prompt like this and fill in the brackets.

@Claude You are helping [TEAM_NAME]. Goal: [ONE_SENTENCE_GOAL].
Use only [TOOLS_OR_REPOS_TO_USE]. Steps: [STEP_1], then [STEP_2].
Deliver: [OUTPUT_FORMAT, e.g. a five-bullet summary or a draft pull request].
Do not change anything; read and report only, unless I say "go ahead".
If a detail is missing, ask me before guessing. Before posting, check that
each claim names its source.

Fill in the team, goal, tools, steps and output format.

Check it worked

• Claude answers in a thread and the whole channel can see it.
• Its list of access matches your intent.
• A request to a connected tool appears in that tool's audit log under Claude's account.
• Organization settings > Claude Tag > Activity (Owners only) lists the work, and the usage page shows per-channel spend.
• Asking @Claude what triggers do you have set up here? shows any standing work, which you can switch off.

What to skip

• Skip launching to every channel on day one. Pilot in one.
• Skip connecting everything. Connect what the first task needs.
• Skip sharing one person's personal login. Use Claude's own account.
• Skip attaching powerful bundles to public channels.
• Skip guest channels at first. The default, Restrict, blocks Claude there; leave it.
• Skip expecting DM results to match channel results. A one-to-one DM runs on the sender's own claude.ai account and connectors, not the channel's setup.

Guardrails

• This is a beta and is described as of 4 October 2026. The Help Centre and the setup docs differ slightly on who counts as an administrator, so follow what your admin page shows.
• Claude Tag is unavailable for organisations with ZDR or CMEK policies.
• Channel memory is retained. Owners can view, edit and delete it, so tell people before they paste anything sensitive into a channel.
• Review output before acting on it, especially pull requests and anything sent outside the team.
• Work that would exceed a spend limit is declined, not cut short. Set the cap deliberately, not at the preselected figure by default.
• Anything not covered in the linked docs (including anything said about Claude Tag on third-party blogs) should be checked with Anthropic's pages before you rely on it.

Sources

• Introducing Claude Tag (Anthropic)
• What is Claude Tag? (Claude Help Center)
• Set up Claude Tag (Claude docs)
• Work with Claude Tag overview (Claude docs)
• Understanding Claude Tag's access model (Tenable)

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