# Slack: 34 point Door Gap
- Site: slack.com
- Scanned: 2026-09-08
- Scan type: Basic scan
- Business type: b2b_saas
- Report: https://www.seconddoor.io/r/slack-2rr7bw
- Scanner version: 12
A browser-blocking policy that contradicts published AI crawler permissions stops assistant shopping, while pricing remains sales-gated and API integration requires hand-written clients.
## Scores
| Measure | Score |
| --- | --- |
| Humans | 68/100 |
| Agents | 34/100 |
| Composite | 51/100 |
| Door Gap | 34 points |
The human score is the mean of the four human dimensions, the agent score the mean of the six agent dimensions, and the Door Gap the difference between them.
## What the machine actually did
The agent got through 9 of 15 requests, but could not ask whether the door opens for requests carrying the AI crawlers' names. It came up empty on 5 other checks too. That is enough missing for a machine to give up before it reaches a purchase.
- ok      reach the site at all
- ok      find out whether machines are welcome
- missing ask whether the door opens for requests carrying the AI crawlers' names
- ok      read the site's own guide for language models
- ok      find out what pages exist
- ok      find a contact route for machines
- missing find a published agent interface
- ok      find an agent plugin manifest
- missing find out whether verified agents are recognised
- missing read the homepage as data rather than as a page
- missing find a machine readable API spec
- ok      read the developer documentation
- missing read the prices without running JavaScript
- ok      find a comparison page worth citing
- ok      walk the way a visitor would, to a signup form or a product
## Top issues
1. **The pricing page publishes no prices and routes all evaluators to a sales contact form, preventing agents and humans from computing total cost before engagement.** (pricing_legibility)
2. **The network edge refuses 1 declared AI crawler that robots.txt welcomes, so the published policy and the actual behaviour disagree.** (machine_discoverability)
3. **No OpenAPI specification is published at any standard path, forcing developers and agents to write API clients by hand from prose documentation.** (programmatic_onboarding)
The evidence and the recommended fix for each are on the report page: https://www.seconddoor.io/r/slack-2rr7bw
## Files generated from this scan
- **A pricing page that states a price** at `/pricing.md`, 1 hour, no developer needed. Verify: The next scan reads at least one price in the raw HTML of the pricing page.
- **Let verified assistants through** at `notes`, 1 hour, developer. Verify: The next scan opens the homepage and the key pages in a real browser and under the search crawler names, and every one is served.
- **robots.txt rules for AI crawlers** at `/robots.txt`, 10 minutes, no developer needed. Verify: The next scan reads robots.txt and finds every search and agent crawler allowed, none of them kept off product or pricing paths.
- **Machine interfaces: where you stand** at `notes`, 10 minutes, no developer needed. Verify: The next scan finds the interface you published answering at its well-known path, and that check passes.
- **Organization structured data** at `homepage`, 15 minutes, developer. Verify: The next scan reads Organization and WebSite nodes in the homepage JSON-LD and the structured data check passes.
Each file is written from what this scan found on the site. The content is in the JSON once the evidence is opened: https://www.seconddoor.io/api/reports/slack-2rr7bw
## The agent door
- **machine_discoverability** 35/100. Slack publishes a sitemap with 3112 URLs, llms.txt, and an ai-plugin.json manifest, and welcomes 14 named AI crawlers in robots.txt. However, a real browser is refused or served a stripped page with only 79 characters rendered, which is.
- **programmatic_onboarding** 24/100. API documentation at api.slack.com/ includes authentication details and code samples, but no machine-readable specification exists at any of the 6 standard OpenAPI paths checked. Clients must be written by hand from prose documentation.
- **pricing_legibility** 12/100. The pricing page at /intl/en-gb/pricing publishes no prices in raw HTML or after rendering. The page is entirely quote-gated, routing evaluators to a sales contact form.
- **agent_aware_instrumentation** 23/100. Slack publishes an ai-plugin.json manifest at /.well-known/ai-plugin.json, signalling awareness of agent integration. However, no MCP manifest exists at any of the 3 standard paths checked (/.well-known/mcp.json, /.well-known/mcp.
- **machine_fetchable_trust** 85/100. Security.txt is published at /.well-known/security.txt with a contact route for machines. The homepage responds to automated HTTP requests with a 200 status in 705ms.
- **commercial_rails** 25/100. A self-serve signup form is reachable 2 steps from the homepage with only 1 required field (email address), allowing trial access without a sales call.
## The human door
- **steps_to_first_value** 80/100. The primary call to action, 'Get started', reaches a signup form in 2 steps from the homepage. The form contains 1 field and requires only the email address, allowing rapid trial access.
- **required_fields** 85/100. The signup form walk counted 1 total field and 1 required field. The single required input is email address. This minimal requirement reduces friction for human and agent signup.
- **verification_walls** 65/100. No verification requirement appears on the signup page itself. The walk did not observe email confirmation, phone verification, or CAPTCHA at the form stage. Verification may occur after submission, but the observed form presents no wall.
- **error_recovery** 41/100. Of 8 inputs on the signup page, only 1 carries validation rules. The form includes 4 live regions and no inline error containers, limiting the ability to recover from input mistakes before submission.
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Scored by SecondDoor. Method: https://www.seconddoor.io/methodology
Scan another site: https://www.seconddoor.io
Rate an issue or this report: POST https://www.seconddoor.io/api/feedback, or the rate_fix tool on https://www.seconddoor.io/api/mcp