Most AI work happens in a tab you have to go to. You leave the conversation you're in, paste in enough context for Claude to understand it, get an answer, and carry that answer back by hand. The cost of that round trip is a large part of why AI tools get tried twice and then quietly dropped.
Connecting Claude directly to a messaging platform removes the trip. It reads the thread it's already sitting in, so nobody has to reconstruct the context, and the answer arrives where the conversation is happening. Anthropic currently ships official support for three platforms, Slack, Discord and Telegram, and they take very different amounts of work to set up.
What the connection actually buys you
The useful part isn't reachability, since Claude was already reachable from a browser. What changes is access to context that lives inside the platform and nowhere else.
A Claude that can pull the last hundred messages in a channel can answer "wait, what did we decide about doors time" without anyone scrolling back through a week of chat. A Claude sitting in a channel unprompted can notice that three people introduced themselves and nobody replied. Those jobs only exist inside the platform, and they're the reason to do the setup at all. If the plan is to ask Claude general questions, the browser was already fine.
Slack: one install, no terminal
Claude in Slack relaunched this year as Claude Tag, a shared @Claude teammate that runs under an organization's identity instead of billing per seat. That billing change is the significant part, because one connection now covers everyone rather than each person setting up their own.
Setting it up. An admin installs it from the Slack Marketplace and then makes two decisions. The first is scope, meaning either the entire workspace or a specific set of channels. The second is a monthly spend limit, either from the presets or a custom number. There's no terminal, no bot token, and nothing for individual users to install on their own.
What it does. Tagging it in a channel or thread gets you a summary of the conversation, an answer to a question, a review of a shared file, or a drafted reply, without anyone leaving Slack. Ambient mode goes further, since turning it on for a channel means Claude stops waiting to be tagged and starts flagging updates worth seeing and following up on threads that stalled. Ambient is off by default and enabled channel by channel, and Anthropic recommends leaving it off in client-facing or regulated channels, because a Claude reading everything in a channel is also a Claude reading anything someone plants there.
Worth knowing. The original Claude in Slack app was retired on August 3 and fully replaced by Claude Tag, so anyone who never migrated is looking at an app that's already gone rather than one that's going away. Claude Tag also requires a Team or Enterprise plan, which means Pro and Max won't get you there, and that matters for organizations small enough to have skipped a Team plan. Conversations with Claude in Slack stay separate from Claude.ai chat history.
Discord: the most capable, and the most setup
There's no Discord marketplace app to click and install. What exists instead is an official plugin Anthropic ships for Claude Code, its terminal-based coding tool, which connects a Discord bot to a live Claude session over MCP.
Setting it up. The work runs in this order:
- Register a bot in Discord's developer portal and enable the message content intent, which is the setting that lets it read messages rather than only post them.
- Invite the bot to the server with the permissions it needs.
- Install the plugin from Claude Code with
/plugin install discord@claude-plugins-official. - Pair the bot to a running Claude session.
- Lock access down to an allowlist, because without one anyone who finds the bot can DM it and get a Claude session on your account.
What it does. Once it's running, Claude can reply in a channel or thread with attachments, react to messages with emoji, edit its own messages to show progress on something long, download files people send it, and pull up to 100 past messages for context. That last one is what separates Discord from Telegram, since it's the difference between a bot that answers questions and a bot that can look up what was already said.
Worth knowing. This is developer work rather than an afternoon job for whoever runs the socials, and the allowlist step is the one that gets skipped under time pressure.
Telegram: the leanest build
Telegram's plugin follows the same pattern as Discord's, in that it's official, built by Anthropic, and installed from Claude Code rather than an app store. It's the faster of the two builds because setup runs through BotFather, Telegram's own bot-creation bot, instead of a developer portal.
Setting it up. Message BotFather to create a bot, which hands back a token, then install the plugin with /plugin install telegram@claude-plugins-official and pair it to a session.
What it does. Claude can reply to messages including files and images, react with a fixed set of emoji, and edit its own messages. What it can't do is look backward, because no fetch or search tool exists for message history, which means it only ever sees what arrives while it's running.
Worth knowing. That limitation matters less than it sounds, because Telegram in live events tends to carry fast, real-time, broadcast-shaped traffic. Ticket alerts, day-of updates, a quick answer for whoever just asked about parking. Catch-up summaries were never the right job for that channel.
The no-code middle ground
If nobody available wants to touch a terminal, there's a third path for Discord and Telegram, which is that workflow tools like Zapier, Make and Pipedream already ship prebuilt connectors between Claude's API and both platforms.
This isn't the same thing as the official plugins. It's closer to automation than conversation and it usually runs in one direction, where a trigger fires, Claude generates something, and the result posts to a channel, which means there's no live back-and-forth, no message history and no reactions. For the specific job of getting a summary posted every time a new blog drops, that's enough, and it doesn't require waiting for a developer to free up.
Which one is worth the effort
| Platform | Setup effort | What it's good at |
|---|---|---|
| Slack | Marketplace install, admin-configured | Ambient monitoring of an internal or VIP channel: stalled threads, buried welcomes, quick Q&A |
| Discord | Developer portal plus terminal | Servers that need FAQ answers and history-aware context |
| Telegram | BotFather plus terminal, lighter than Discord | Real-time broadcast and support: alerts, day-of updates, quick replies |
Slack is the one to turn on first, because it's a today task with no engineering dependency and it's where most internal coordination already happens. Discord and Telegram are worth the build only when there's already an active server or channel to point them at and somebody who can own the setup, and when there isn't, the no-code bridge still gets you something without waiting for that person to exist.
TL;DR
Do I need a developer to add Claude to Discord or Telegram?
For the official plugins, yes, because both require terminal setup through Claude Code. The no-code route through Zapier, Make or Pipedream skips that, at the cost of two-way conversation and message history.
Is Claude in Slack free?
No. Claude Tag requires a Team or Enterprise plan on top of a Slack workspace, and Pro and Max don't cover it.
What happened to the old Claude in Slack app?
It was retired on August 3 and replaced entirely by Claude Tag, with no fallback to the old version.
Which one should I set up first?
Slack, unless the real activity is happening in a Discord or Telegram that's already running, in which case start where the people already are.
New to Claude at Hive? Start with our beginner's guide, then bring questions to the community.
