If you would like an AI “personal agent” but don’t want your data on some opaque cloud computer, there’s a new option that appears to be somewhat nicer: [rociiu] has talorys, an AI agent that runs in your Cloudflare account. True, it is still on a cloud computer, but it is your account on a cloud computer. It is designed so you can use it on Cloudflare’s free account with reasonable limits, and the code running is all on GitHub, so you can — if you are so inclined — look to see what it is doing. The data, too, is all in your cloud instance.
This seems like a reasonable compromise. Cloudflare provides the hosting, and the software in your virtual computer does all the work. At least, that’s how it is promoted. Honestly, we haven’t combed over the code, but the assertion is “Free-tier friendly… no telemetry.”
We are fairly sure they are using Cloudflare’s AI engines, too, so it would be interesting to see how much of your data they could, in theory, harvest in transit. Of course, your data is still in the cloud, so if you are really worried about privacy, this might not be for you. But since everything is in your account and open, you can at least have more control over what’s there. For example, you can easily download or delete your data. You can even see exactly what prompts it uses.
Are there downsides? Sure. The tool can’t integrate with your calendar, for example. It can’t deal with e-mail, nor can it search the web. It won’t write code for you. This isn’t meant to be a general-purpose chatbot replacement. It is more like an AI tool for keeping a task list.
While Cloudflare does have a free tier, it does have daily limits, and you may hit them. And, of course, if things like this get too popular, they could reduce those limits. The system does let you export your data, though.
It isn’t flawless. We asked it to set up three recurring meetings. It got one right, put the other one in for Sunday instead of Monday (even though the title said Monday), and hit a Cloudflare rate limit and failed to create the third one. We asked it to retry the failed one once, and it didn’t work. So I waited a bit and tried again. It claimed it worked. However, when I looked at the schedule, it wasn’t there.
We then asked it to fix the Sunday schedule and add the one it had missed again. It did add it that time. It also added the Monday meeting, but despite saying it would delete the Sunday one, it didn’t. I manually deleted it.
Installation is easy. You can connect a domain you own to Cloudflare or use the subdomain on pages.dev that they give you, which works fine. You run a single command on your computer. It handles authentication to the server and sets up all the services and data stores.
So essentially it is a to-do, reminder, and note-taking system. However, it does work well when it works. It can remember things and will find things it remembers or in notes very easily. Can you do that with non-AI tools? Of course. Not to mention, any of the “big” chatbots can do all of that and more. But not in your own hosted server account.
Besides, it is interesting that for small uses, Cloudflare offers plenty of free-tier compute resources that might come in handy for other projects. It is nice to have some free cloud-based computers, as we noted in a recent Linux Fu post where we used Oracle’s free servers.
• Salesforce has integrated Slackbot more deeply into its platform, providing access purportedly to the entire Salesforce ecosystem.
• Despite positives the announcement generates concerns, the most pressing regarding security.
Salesforce has greatly extended the scope of Slackbot, the AI-driven personal work agent built into Slack, claiming it now spans the entire Salesforce platform. The change will add substantial value, keep Slack – the company – competitive with rivals, and cement the starring role Slack has come to play at Salesforce.
The new and improved Slackbot advances if not completes Slack’s emergence as a key member of the Salesforce organization. When acquired by Salesforce in 2021 Slack seemed destined to fall into a black hole, a Jonah being swallowed by the whale. Instead, it has been methodically elevated into a central gateway of the Salesforce platform. Slack has been increasingly embedded into Salesforce’s broader product fabric, positioned as the front end for Salesforce’s AI ecosystem and now evolving into the default collaboration interface for the Salesforce platform. Slack has been granted a new and better life by its parent.
In addition to accelerating its rebirth, the enhanced Slackbot benefits Slack by bringing greater value to users and keeping it neck-and-neck with rivals such as Cisco and Zoom, who are infusing their own platforms with the same type of cross-pollination.
This latest version of Slackbot enables users to get work done far more effectively by serving as a unified front across the Slack and Salesforce platforms. At the heart of the rejuvenated Slackbot lies MCP servers from Salesforce, the fuel behind the Salesforce ‘Headless 360’ initiative which seeks to harness capabilities anywhere in Salesforce and funnel them into Slack. Slackbot now acts as a conductor, overseeing an orchestra consisting of Salesforce products, enterprise data, third-party applications, and AI agents.
At a most basic level, users provide Slackbot a request through a natural language interface, and Slackbot fulfils it by pulling together relevant resources such as conversations, files, and data residing in multiple, often far-flung repositories. Users can, for example, update sales pipelines and surface next best actions, discover whether the marketing team is on track to achieve a forecast, or route a service case to the appropriate individuals. Over time, Slackbot gets to know users better, thus fulfilling their needs with greater speed and accuracy.
Despite the positives, there are some concerns associated with the announcement. The largest involves security. The security posture behind Slackbot is an open question and one with serious implications especially given the pooling and sharing of data which Slackbot facilitates; Salesforce needs to articulate clearly what types of safeguards are in place. Another concern is the lack of contact center capabilities to complement the collaboration capabilities found in Slack; a robust contact center portfolio has become critical for remaining competitive in the market. Last, despite rapidly accumulating AI-driven features on its platform and its association with Salesforce, the Slack name lacks the brand equity enjoyed by competitors. The likes of Cisco and Microsoft were well known in team collaboration well before the pandemic, and Zoom became a household name when it hit. Slack has not achieved the same notoriety.
If Salesforce can promptly address each of these issues, it could merit inclusion among the top players such as Cisco, Microsoft, and Zoom.
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