Slack Curator

Turning “inspiration spam” into a weekly digest

A two-week internal tool that transformed a noisy "inspiration" Slack channel into a readable, prioritised weekly newsletter – so the best ideas didn’t disappear into the scroll.

At a glance

Client: Internal (Normally)
Format: 2-week design and build sprint
My role: product + prototyping lead
Team: 2 people (me + 1 creative technologist)

At a glance

Client: Internal (Normally)
Format: 2-week design and build sprint
My role: product + prototyping lead
Team: 2 people (me + 1 creative technologist)

The problem

Our team shared lots of valuable links, ideas, and inspiration in a Slack channel – but almost none of it was findable later. Great posts would get buried within hours, and “we should remember this” became “we won’t”.

The key insight – curation beats storage

We didn’t need a better archive. We needed a lightweight habit: a weekly moment where the best items were surfaced, conversations summarised, and made easy to skim.

What we designed and built

  • Capture pipeline that ingested posts from a Slack channel and pulled out the useful bits (links, text, attachments, conversation threads)

  • Ranking approach that used engagement signals (reactions, replies) to prioritise what mattered

  • Simple curation layer to group items into digestible sections (themes/categories)

  • Weekly newsletter sent by email as a “best of the week” summary

Outcomes

  • Turned a high-noise channel into a consistent "weekly digest” ritual

  • Reduced repeated “have we seen this before?” moments

  • Created an internal tool that shipped quickly because it solved a real, felt need – not a speculative one

What I learned

  • Internal tools don't always need to require your attention; they can often just sit in the background and proactively deliver value.

  • The fastest path to usefulness is often to start with the output format (the digest), then build backwards.

  • Engagement signals are a surprisingly good proxy for relevance – especially when time is tight.

If your team has internal workflows that are "obviously painful" but never get prioritised, let's chat about how a lightweight (AI) tool could make a big difference.

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