Kilo launches AI-powered Slack bot that ships code from a chat message

Kilo Code, the open-source AI coding startup backed by GitLab cofounder Sid Sijbrandij, is launching a Slack integration that allows software engineering teams to execute code changes, debug issues, and push pull requests directly from their team chat — without opening an IDE or switching applications.

The product, called Kilo for Slack, arrives as the AI-assisted coding market heats up with multibillion-dollar acquisitions and funding rounds. But rather than building another siloed coding assistant, Kilo is making a calculated bet: that the future of AI development tools lies not in locking engineers into a single interface, but in embedding AI capabilities into the fragmented workflows where decisions actually happen.

"Engineering teams don't make decisions in IDE sidebars. They make them in Slack," Scott Breitenother, Kilo Code's co-founder and CEO, said in an interview with VentureBeat. "The Slackbot allows you to do all this — and more — without leaving Slack."

The ...