Most AI tools ask you to leave your workflow and go somewhere else — a new tab, a new interface, a new set of rules to learn. Zeely Creative Agent takes the opposite approach: it lives inside Slack, in the channels where your marketing team already works, and it does the research and creative groundwork you'd otherwise hand off to an analyst or agency.
This guide covers what the agent actually is, how to install it, and how to get useful work out of it from day one.
What Is Zeely Creative Agent in Slack?
Zeely is a marketing AI agent that works directly inside Slack. You mention @zeely in a channel, describe what you need in plain language with no need to use a special prompt format or command, and it researches the topic and replies in the thread. It can help with a range of marketing tasks, including:
Market research: Research markets, trends, and opportunities.
Competitor analysis: Analyze competitors and compare their marketing approaches.
Audience research: Explore your target audience, their needs, pain points, and preferences.
Instagram and TikTok analysis: Analyze content and trends on Instagram and TikTok.
Viral analysis: Study viral content to identify useful patterns, formats, and hooks.
Creative brief builder: Help turn your marketing idea into a clear creative brief.
To do this research, the agent draws on a range of public sources: Instagram, TikTok, YouTube (including comments), Reddit, Quora, the Meta Ad Library, and brand websites. Depending on the task, it uses these to surface things like content formats, hooks, audience objections, and the creative approaches competitors are actually running.
Does Zeely work on a free Slack plan?
The Zeely agent panel in Slack requires a paid Slack plan. On a free Slack workspace, you can still use Zeely through channel mentions and direct messages.
How to install the Creative Agent in Slack
Start the setup. Open the Zeely Slack Agent page and click Get started.
Answer two quick questions about your business — your company size (from "Just me" up to "More than 100 employees") and your monthly marketing budget.
These help Zeely calibrate its research and suggestions to your scale.
Enter your email address and click Continue. You'll receive $100 in free credits as part of the setup.
If you already have a Zeely account, select Log in instead.
Connect to Slack. Click Continue with Slack, and you'll be redirected to Slack to link Zeely to your workspace. If you don't have the Slack desktop app installed, you can complete this step in your browser instead.
Review and allow permissions. Slack will show you the Review app permissions screen. Choose the workspace you want to install Zeely into, review what it's asking to access, and click Allow.
After you allow the requested permissions, you'll be redirected back to Zeely and the setup will be completed. You can then find Zeely under Agents and apps in Slack. Wait for approval, if required. Some workspaces require an administrator to approve new apps before they can be used. If that's the case here, your installation may sit pending approval for a bit — that's a setting on your Slack workspace, not a sign that anything went wrong with the install.
Installing Zeely doesn't automatically add it to your channels. Invite Zeely Creative Agent to the channel where you want to use it. Once it's there, mention
@zeelyand describe what you need. Zeely will reply in the thread.
How to ask Zeely for something
Write to Zeely in your own words. There's no special syntax to learn.
For example:
@zeely, research our competitors in the beauty market and summarize their main offers.
Or:
@zeely, analyze our target audience for this product and identify their biggest pain points.
Or:
@zeely, review this ad concept and suggest three stronger variations.
Once the agent starts working, it shows a status in the thread so you can see that your request is being processed. Research can take a minute or more. When the response is ready, the status is removed.
Ask follow-up questions in the same thread
You can continue the conversation in the same thread without repeating everything. The agent reads the recent messages in the thread where it was mentioned and uses them as context for its response. It does not read the entire channel just because it has been invited there.
For example, you can start with:
@zeely, research our three biggest competitors.
Then follow up:
Which one has the strongest offer for first-time customers?
The Creative Agent can use the context from the thread to answer the follow-up.
Working privately
Send Zeely a direct message when you want to draft something without the whole team seeing it yet. DM conversations stay completely separate from channel conversations.
One Slack-level limitation worth knowing: Slack doesn't allow agents to be added to an existing group direct message. If you want to work with Zeely privately as a group, the workaround is to create a private channel and invite it there instead.
Working in private channels
The agent can work in private channels too, but you need to invite it to the channel first. If it hasn't been added to a channel, it has no access to what's discussed there and can't respond.
Multiple people, no waiting in line
Zeely processes requests from different people in parallel. Your team doesn't need to wait for one person's request to finish before sending another.
How the Creative Agent remembers context
Your agent can save useful information from your conversations as memory, so your team isn't re-explaining the same brand facts every time. It stores memory as a rephrased fact rather than a quoted message — if someone mentions the company is entering the Canadian market, Zeely retains the fact of the expansion, not the original sentence. You can also directly ask Zeely to remember something. A few things worth knowing about how memory works:
It's tied to where it was created. Something saved in one channel won't show up in another channel or in someone else's DM with Zeely.
It expires. Saved memory is automatically deleted after 90 days.
Removing the app clears it. If Zeely is removed from a workspace, that workspace's memory is deleted along with it.
You can send Zeely images and screenshots, videos, documents, and public links to files. One clear limitation: Zeely doesn't currently support .docx or .xlsx files — if you send one, it won't be read.
For longer research tasks, Zeely can return results as a downloadable file directly in the thread, so your team can save and share it without scrolling back through the conversation.
How to tell if it's working
When Zeely picks up your request, it shows a status indicator in the thread while it works. The research can take a minute or more. Once the response is ready, the status is removed. This is the simplest way to tell whether it's still processing or has stalled.
What data does Zeely access?
Zeely only accesses the Slack content it needs to work in the places where you've invited it. It doesn't access messages from channels where it hasn't been invited, and it doesn't process messages that don't involve the agent.
For more details about permissions, data storage, retention, and deletion, see Privacy and data in Zeely for Slack.
What Zeely Creative Agent doesn't do
To avoid confusion, it's worth being upfront about the boundaries. The agent:
Doesn't generate images or videos. It can suggest creative ideas and variations in text.
Doesn't access your advertising accounts, budgets, spending, or campaigns.
Doesn't work on a schedule or send automatic reports.
Doesn't connect to external services such as spreadsheets, documents, or advertising platforms.
Doesn't write or review code.
Doesn't support
.docxor.xlsxfiles.Doesn't work in Microsoft Teams.
A note on accuracy
Like any AI system, the Creative Agent’s output can be inaccurate. Treat its research, data points, and creative suggestions as a strong starting point rather than a final answer. Double-check anything you’re about to share with a client or use to make decisions about your marketing budget.
Getting support
If something isn’t working as expected, make sure Zeely is invited to the channel, check that you’re mentioning @zeely correctly, and see whether the Creative Agent is already replying in an existing thread before starting a new request.
If the issue continues, contact us at [email protected] or through in-app chat. You don’t need a Zeely account to contact support.