Hi Paul! Thank you for the time and the thoughtful response. Regarding vocabulary, perhaps you’re right, I don’t have the answer. I just wanted to create a split between bots/apps, in the most general sense, and NLP-powered conversational agents that media (and clients) keep talking about. It’s true that in my daily practice, I often end up talking about “Slack apps”, and that’s all.

More importantly, the metaphor about browser add-ons. I think it’s spot on for Slack! When I build a Slack app, I’m always thinking “how is that feature going to improve their daily flow”, and it has to fit within their Slack experience.

However, I think the metaphor kind of breaks down when you think of other platforms, like Facebook Messenger. The Messenger apps I’ve built or seen so far are rather standalone apps — just with a much lower barrier to entry than apps you need to download. It will probably change if/when Facebook allows bots to be invited in group chats, at that point it will mesh much more with the platform experience itself.