A complete guide to the Slack AI integration with Loom

Let’s be honest, we’re all trying to escape the endless cycle of back-to-back meetings. That’s why asynchronous communication has become so important, letting us get deep work done while still staying connected. Tools like Slack, our digital office, and Loom, the king of video messaging, are at the heart of this shift.

This guide is a straightforward look at the native Slack AI integration with Loom. We’ll cover what it does, how teams are using it, how much it costs, and, crucially, where it falls short. While the integration is great for sharing quick videos, it doesn’t quite solve the bigger problem: turning all that useful video content into searchable knowledge that your team (and your AI tools) can actually use.

What is the Slack AI integration with Loom?

At its heart, the integration is all about connecting real-time chat in Slack with async video from Loom. It’s a simple way to bring visual context straight into your conversations, helping you explain tricky ideas, give feedback, or share updates without having to book another meeting.

Understanding Slack

If you’re not already living in Slack, it’s basically the digital headquarters for countless companies. It’s a messaging app that organizes all your team’s chats, tools, and files in one spot. You can create channels for different projects or topics, jump on quick audio or video calls with huddles, and even use its AI features to get summaries of long threads you missed. The real magic of Slack is how it connects with all your other tools, and its integration library is massive.

Understanding Loom

Loom is a video messaging tool that makes it incredibly easy to record your screen, camera, and voice all at once. Instead of typing out a long-winded email or trying to explain a bug over chat, you can just hit record and talk through it. Loom’s own AI features add some nice touches, like automatic transcripts, chapters, and even removing all your "ums" and "ahs" to make videos easier to watch.

How the native integration works

Getting Slack and Loom connected is easy, and once you do, a few key things happen that make sharing videos feel completely natural.

• Links just work: When you paste a Loom link into a Slack channel or DM, it automatically expands into a video player. Your team can watch the whole thing, speed it up, and read the transcript without ever leaving Slack.

• Instant notifications: You’ll get a heads-up in a dedicated Loom app channel in Slack whenever someone watches your video, leaves a comment, or drops an emoji reaction. It keeps the conversation going and lets you know people are actually seeing your message.

• Record right from Slack: You can kick off a new Loom recording from any conversation just by typing /loom or /record. When you’re finished, the video is ready to share right back in that same channel, keeping everything in context.

Key features and benefits

The mechanics might be simple, but they lead to some real benefits that cut down on context switching and help your team stay in sync. It’s all about making video a normal part of your day-to-day chats.

The best part is how Loom links just work in Slack. It might sound like a small thing, but not having to click a link, open a new browser tab, and wait for a page to load makes a huge difference. It keeps the conversation flowing and makes people much more likely to watch the video you sent.

Because you get instant Slack notifications when someone interacts with your Loom, you can jump in and answer questions or respond to feedback right away. This turns a one-way message into a real conversation and encourages more collaboration than an old-school email ever could.

The /loom command is also brilliant for those spur-of-the-moment explanations. Spotted a weird bug on the website? Need to show a new hire how to use a tool? Instead of fumbling around to open the right app, you just type a command and start recording. It removes all the friction.

Finally, since Looms embed so cleanly, they can become part of your other workflows. For instance, if you use an app to create Jira tickets from Slack, you can drop a Loom link in the description to give developers a visual walkthrough of a bug. It saves everyone a ton of time and confusion.

Common use cases

Different teams can use the Slack AI integration with Loom to smooth out their daily routines. Here’s a look at how it plays out in the real world.

Engineering teams

Instead of writing a novel for a pull request description or scheduling a meeting to review code, a developer can just record a five-minute Loom. They can walk through their changes, explain their thinking, and point out specific areas where they’d like feedback. They post it in the project’s Slack channel, and reviewers can watch it whenever they have time, leaving comments on the video or in the Slack thread.

Customer support teams

When a customer runs into a tricky issue, a support agent can record a quick, personalized Loom showing them exactly how to fix it. They might send that to the customer, but they can also share it in an internal support channel. This not only lets them get a second opinion from senior agents but also creates a handy training video for the rest of the team to use later.

Sales and marketing

A sales rep can record a short, personalized demo for a prospect and share it with their manager in a private message to get some quick feedback before sending it over. For marketers, a team member could share a video walkthrough of a new campaign brief in their channel, making sure everyone is on the same page without having to find a time that works across three different time zones.

Onboarding and HR

HR teams can build a library of short, friendly Looms in a #new-hires channel. These videos can cover everything from setting up your laptop and navigating the benefits portal to explaining company traditions and tools. New employees can watch these on their own schedule, which makes that first week feel a lot less overwhelming.

Limitations of the integration

The integration is fantastic for sharing information. No doubt about it. But when you want to build a smart, unified source of truth for your company, you’ll start to see the cracks. It helps you get content out there, but it doesn’t help you manage it, search it, or automate it.

1. Your video knowledge is trapped

   The most valuable part of a Loom is usually the transcript, all the detailed, step-by-step info you shared. But that knowledge is locked inside the video. Slack’s search can’t read it, and an internal AI chatbot can’t access it to answer questions. If a teammate asks, "How do I process a refund?", your AI assistant has no way of knowing the answer is buried in a Loom that was shared six months ago. The knowledge effectively disappears once the conversation moves on.

2. Automation hits a wall

   Because the content inside a Loom is invisible to other systems, you can’t build smart automations around it. You can’t, for example, have a workflow that automatically turns a helpful Loom tutorial into a polished knowledge base article. You can’t triage a support ticket based on keywords mentioned in a user’s screen recording. Everything stays manual.

3. It points to info, but doesn’t give answers

   At the end of the day, the integration just points you to a video; it doesn’t give you the answer directly. A team member still has to stop what they’re doing, press play, watch the video, and find the specific piece of information they need. When everyone is moving fast, that little bit of friction is often enough to slow things down.

Pricing breakdown

Okay, let’s talk about the cost. To really get the most out of this integration, you’ll likely need a paid plan for both platforms. The free tiers are great for a test drive, but you’ll bump up against limits on things like message history, number of videos, and recording length pretty quickly. Here’s a general idea of what to expect.

Slack pricing plans

Slack’s plans scale up with features like unlimited message history, more integrations, and better AI capabilities. The Business+ plan is usually the sweet spot for growing teams that need more advanced features.

Loom pricing plans

Loom’s pricing is built around recording limits and access to its AI Suite, which is what automatically creates titles, summaries, and chapters for your videos. The Business + AI plan is where you unlock all of its automation goodies.

The Slack AI integration with Loom: Great for sharing, but not for knowledge

So, what’s the verdict? The Slack AI integration with Loom is genuinely useful. It does a fantastic job of making async communication more visual and personal, letting you share complex ideas without leaving your main workspace. For day-to-day feedback, code reviews, and team updates, it’s a great combo.

But it’s important to know what it doesn’t do. It’s a distribution channel, not a knowledge management system. All that valuable, detailed information inside your videos stays locked away, out of reach of the very AI tools that are meant to help your team work smarter.

That’s the next piece of the puzzle. While Loom and Slack help you create and share knowledge, eesel AI helps you unify and automate it. By connecting to all your written knowledge, eesel AI powers smart agents that can resolve support tickets, answer employee questions in Slack, and give your team the instant information they need to do their best work.

Don’t let your team’s expertise stay trapped in video files. See how eesel AI can centralize your information and put it to work. Start your free trial today.