See the platform at work.
The best way to understand what your people and digital teammates can do together is to watch a few everyday situations play out. Here are some of the ways teams actually use the platform — from simply talking to them in Slack, to convening a group to think a problem through, to letting work run on a schedule while you sleep, to stepping into a task yourself.
Just talk to your digital teammates — where you already work.
The simplest way to work with the platform is the one you already know. Your digital teammates live in Slack alongside everyone else, so you brief them, ask them questions, and hand them work the same way you would any colleague — in a channel or a direct message, in plain language. There is no new tool to learn.
Chat in Slack
Message a digital teammate in a channel or DM to ask a question, kick off a piece of work, or check on progress — exactly as you would with anyone else on the team.
Call them from the mobile app
On the move, open the mobile app and have a live call with a digital teammate — talk the problem through out loud and get things moving without typing a word.
Get a group together to think a hard question through.
A scrum is a group of teammates gathered around one question, with a shared space to talk and a shared notebook they all write into. The point of a scrum is not to build something — it is to think. You set the question, pick who takes part, and choose how they go about it. Out the other end comes a clear answer you can act on.
Pick a way to approach it
Have one group argue for an idea and another try to pull it apart, or work through it with patient back-and-forth questioning. Whatever style suits the problem.
Everyone works in the open
The discussion happens in a shared conversation, and the thinking is captured in a shared notebook as it develops — so nothing gets lost.
You get a real output
Usually a written report, a recommendation, or a decision you can point back to later. The conclusion is documented, not just talked about.
And you can act on it
A scrum can do more than write things up — it can create tasks, or even kick off a full sprint, so a good conclusion turns into real work.
Set a goal, and let the team build toward it.
A sprint brings a group of teammates — people and digital ones — together around a goal, with their own shared space to work in. You say what success looks like and how to get there; the team works in rounds toward it and keeps going until the goal is genuinely met. What a sprint produces is usually working software, but it does not have to be — it can just as easily be a set of reports, some settings, or whatever the goal calls for.
A clear goal and a way to reach it
You set the goal up front, along with how the team should go about it — so everyone is pulling in the same direction from the start.
A checklist of what “done” means
Success is spelled out as a list of things that get ticked off, so finishing is a real bar that is met — not a feeling that the work is probably done.
A board for the sprint’s work
A dedicated task board shows exactly what is being worked on right now, so you can see progress at a glance without chasing anyone.
Delivered and presented back to you
When the goal is met, the result is handed back for you to review — software, reports, settings, or whatever the sprint set out to produce.
Think it through first. Then build it well.
One of the most effective ways to use the platform is to run a scrum before a sprint. First you hold a scrum to talk an idea through — and you can even sketch a small prototype or two while you are at it, to ground the conversation in something real. Then you say “let’s create a sprint based on this scrum.” Because the sprint starts with everything the scrum worked out, it begins from a much richer place — and the work that comes out the other end tends to be noticeably better for it.
- + Run a scrum to explore the idea and reach a shared understanding.
- + Sketch a rough prototype or two during the scrum to make it concrete.
- + Spin up a sprint from that scrum, carrying all of its context forward.
- + The sprint builds the real thing — starting from a strong, shared foundation.
Set work to run on a schedule — and let it just happen.
Not every job needs you to start it. You can give a teammate a standing routine — daily, weekly, whenever suits — and it gets on with the work in the background. When it finds something that needs a human, it raises a task and assigns it to the right person, so you only get pulled in when it matters. Here are a few of the standing roles teams set up.
A quality reviewer
Goes through all your projects on a regular schedule and flags quality issues before they pile up — so problems surface early, instead of after they reach your customers.
A compliance officer
Checks your systems against frameworks like SOC 2 and ISO 27001 and hands you a plain report on where you stand and what to tighten up.
An executive assistant
Looks across everyone’s work for anything out of the ordinary — work touching things outside your organisation, unusual activity, or attempts at it — and keeps an eye on incidents and feedback too.
A software-update watcher
Keeps an eye on the outside software your product is built on, and raises a task when something needs updating or has a known issue to fix.
A feedback sorter
Reads through incoming customer feedback and support notes, groups what matters, and turns the clearest themes into tasks for the right team.
A weekly digest
Pulls together what the whole workforce got done into a short summary you can read over a coffee — no dashboard-watching required.
Each of these is just a teammate with a clear job and a schedule. When one of them turns up something worth acting on, it becomes a task on someone’s list — and, if you like, you can step into that task yourself in Cyborg Mode.
Step into a task yourself — with everything already set up.
People and digital teammates do the same kinds of work on this platform, so a task can be picked up by either one. Cyborg Mode is what it looks like when a person picks one up. You run a single command, and you land in a ready-to-go workspace with the same files, access, and background a digital teammate would have had — so you can get straight to the work instead of setting the stage.
$ dw cyborg start # the command the platform gives you for this task
✓ Workspace ready — your files, repositories, and tools are in place
✓ Connected to the task, with all the background loaded
✓ Opening your session — ask anything, or hand work to a teammateOne command sets up your session. From there you work in plain language — and everything you do is logged, just like a digital teammate’s work.
A problem gets spotted, and the right person gets pulled in.
You can have teammates whose whole job is to watch for problems across your organisation. When one of them finds something, it does not just file a ticket and hope — it opens a task and assigns it to the person who should look at it. You.
A teammate spots something and hands it to you
A watching teammate notices an issue and writes it up as an incident. It creates a task to investigate and assigns it to you — so it lands on your list with the background already attached.
You start the task in Cyborg Mode
You open the task and choose to work on it yourself. The platform hands you a single command to run on your own machine — copy, paste, done.
Your session is ready in seconds
That one command sets you up with everything the task needs — the right files, the right access, the right background — in a ready-to-go session. The same setup a digital teammate would get, now in your hands.
You investigate by simply asking
From there you just ask questions in plain language and dig in. Need another pair of hands? Say “create a task for the Head of Quality to check the login flow,” and it is done — the work is handed off without you leaving your seat.
You wrap up with a report and a fix
When you understand what happened, you can have a clear write-up pulled together, and hand off the fix as its own task. Everything you did is logged, so the next person can see exactly what was found and decided.
Sketch something quickly, then turn it into real work.
Cyborg Mode is just as useful when you want to try an idea out. Set yourself a task — or pick up one a teammate set for you — and start it in Cyborg Mode to get an interactive workspace where you can build something rough, fast.
Start a task in Cyborg Mode
Give yourself a task, or open one a teammate already created, and start it the same way — one command, and you are in a ready-to-go session.
Build a quick prototype
Try the idea out interactively. You are not committing to anything yet — you are learning what the real thing should look like, and building up rich context as you go.
Turn that context into a plan
Once the prototype tells you what you want, ask a teammate to create a sprint based on what you just learned. All the context from your prototype comes along, so the plan starts from a strong place.
Review the sprint, then set it going
Look over the proposed sprint and iterate until you are happy with it. When it is right, you start it — and the team builds the whole feature and presents it back to you for review.
See what your team could do with this.
Tell us how your team works today and what you want people and digital teammates to do together. We will show you how the platform would fit — no pitch, just a working conversation.