ChatGPT Space Is Not Slack, and That's the Point
Space puts humans and agents in one shared workspace. It's not trying to be your chat app, and that's why it might work.
OpenAI's ChatGPT Space is a shared workspace where humans and agents work on the same surface. The immediate instinct is to compare it to Slack, because it has threads and people. That comparison misses the point. Space isn't where you gossip; it's where a task and the agent doing it live in the same place as you.
The difference is the agent as a resident, not a chatbot you ping. In Slack an integration posts and leaves. In Space the agent has the workspace, the files, and the goal, and you check in. That's closer to a coworker's desk than a message thread, and the metaphor matters for how you'd actually use it.
It won't replace Slack for the social layer. Nobody wants their watercooler to be an agent surface. But for the project where the work is 'human sets intent, agent executes, human reviews,' Space is a cleaner home than a chat app that was built for humans talking to humans.
The bet is that a generation of work is agent-resident, and the tools built for human-only collaboration are awkward for it. Space is OpenAI's swing at that. Whether it lands depends on the agent reliability, not the UI, but the shape is right.