Short answer: the best AI bot for answering employee questions in Slack from your company docs, and the best knowledge base bot for Slack, depends on where the answers live and who keeps them right. Guru, Slite and Tettra fit a team that writes and reviews its own answers in a knowledge base. Glean fits a large company whose knowledge is spread across many systems, and Slack AI fits when most answers are already in Slack and you are on Business+ or Enterprise+. Runbear fits a team that wants one shared agent to answer from the doc tools it already uses and then handle the follow-up task.
Disclosure: Runbear is our product. This is not a ranked list. Each tool is listed with the job it fits, and facts about other products come from their own websites and help pages, linked in the text and checked in October 2026.
How we compared these knowledge base bots
We looked at AI bots that answer employees inside Slack from company documents and compared them on the same five questions:
- Where does the answer come from? A curated knowledge base, an index of many systems, Slack itself, or the docs you connect.
- Who keeps it right? Named owners who verify answers, or the source documents themselves.
- Whose permissions apply? The asker's own access, or one shared set of documents.
- Which Slack plan do you need? Some features only come with higher Slack tiers.
- What happens after the answer? Some bots stop at the answer. Others can open a ticket or update a record.
Enterprise search or a curated knowledge base?
For a knowledge base bot in Slack, Guru, Slite and Tettra keep a curated set of answers that people review, Glean and Slack AI search what already exists, and Runbear answers from the doc tools a team already uses. Enterprise search indexes content from many systems and answers from whatever it finds, following each source's permissions. A curated knowledge base holds a smaller set of answers that named people write and review. An agent over your existing docs answers from the few tools you connect to it.
- Choose enterprise search when knowledge is spread across dozens of tools and nobody could maintain it all by hand.
- Choose a curated knowledge base when a smaller set of answers must be right every time, such as HR policies, product facts or support macros, and you have owners to review them.
- Choose an agent over your existing docs when the answers already sit in a few places like Notion or Google Drive, and a question often leads to a next step.
Comparison table
| Tool | Fits | Answers from | Keeps answers accurate by | In Slack |
| Guru | Answers that must stay verified | Guru knowledge plus connected apps such as Google Drive, SharePoint, Confluence, Notion and Slack | Experts verify and agents flag outdated content | Channels, DMs and threads |
| Slite | A knowledge base that flags outdated docs | Your Slite workspace plus connected tools, such as Slack channels you index | Slite Agent drafts fixes for a person to review | Mention @Slite |
| Tettra | A wiki built from Slack questions | Your Tettra knowledge base | Experts answer the questions the bot could not | Kai answers in channels and DMs |
| Glean | Company-wide search in a large organization | One index across many connected systems | The source systems and their permissions | Private to the asker by default |
| Slack AI | Answers from your Slack conversations | Slack content you can access, plus apps like Google Drive on Enterprise+ | The underlying Slack content | Search answers and Slackbot on Business+ and Enterprise+ |
| Runbear | A shared agent that answers and then acts | Notion, Google Drive, Confluence, SharePoint and other connected tools | The source documents, which someone on your team owns | Mention the agent in Slack or Microsoft Teams |
Guru: verified answers reviewed by experts
Guru is a company knowledge base with Knowledge Agents on top. In Slack, people ask in channels or DMs and get cited answers, and agents can also answer proactively in Slack threads. Admins pick each agent's sources, which can include Guru knowledge bases, Google Drive, SharePoint, Confluence, Notion, Slack and approved public websites.
Guru's strength is upkeep. Its agents can mark knowledge as verified or unverified from how people actually use it and flag outdated content, and a wrong answer can be flagged for an expert to review. In Slack, a useful thread can be drafted into knowledge and routed to an expert for verification. Guru states that its agents always enforce role-based permissions, so people see only what they are allowed to see.
Pick Guru when accuracy matters more than coverage and you can name an expert for each topic, because those experts do the review work.
Slite: a knowledge base that flags outdated docs
Slite is an AI knowledge base. With its Slack app, people mention @Slite to ask questions of the Slite workspace, share docs and get notified when docs change. You can also index chosen Slack channels as a source, and Slite Agent then respects Slack's channel permissions.
When Slite Agent notices a change in tools such as Slack, Linear or GitHub, it sends a draft fix to the right person to review.
Slite suits a team that is ready to write and keep its docs in Slite itself.
Tettra: a wiki that turns Slack threads into pages
Tettra is an internal wiki with a Slack bot called Kai. Kai answers repeat questions in Slack channels and DMs from your Tettra knowledge base. If Kai has no answer, it saves the question and hands it to a subject-matter expert, who answers it in Tettra. Kai can also summarize a useful Slack thread and save it as a new Tettra page.
Tettra suits a team that wants to build its wiki out of the questions people already ask in Slack.
Glean: company-wide search
Glean is enterprise search with an assistant and agents on top, built for answers that live across many departments and tools. Its Slack app answers when it spots a question in a channel or when someone @mentions it, and those answers are private to the asker by default unless Public Mode is on. Its index enforces each document's permissions across its connected systems, and its Slack coworker can also file and update tickets and run workflows.
Pick Glean when you want one search layer for the whole company.
Slack AI: answers from Slack itself
Slack's own AI answers from content you can already access in Slack, and Slackbot is Slack's personal AI agent. As of October 2026, the AI features guide lists the features by plan:
- Pro: conversation summaries and huddle notes. Free and Pro workspaces may get a limited preview of Slackbot.
- Business+ and Enterprise+: search answers and Slackbot.
- Enterprise+: enterprise search, which brings in other apps such as Google Drive and GitHub. The enterprise search article says Enterprise Grid with the legacy Slack AI add-on also has it.
Workspaces on the legacy version of Business+, or on Enterprise Grid without the Slack AI add-on, get only the Pro features.
Slack AI is the simplest start when most of your answers are in Slack conversations and you are already on the right plan.
Runbear: a shared agent that answers and then acts
Runbear answers employee questions in Slack from company docs such as Notion, Google Drive, Confluence and SharePoint, cites the document behind each answer, and can then open a Jira or Linear ticket when the question turns into work. Its knowledge base chatbot guide walks through the setup. You give a shared agent a name such as @HR or @SalesOps, connect the sources your team already trusts, and mention the agent in Slack or Microsoft Teams. It answers in the same thread, and when the documents do not cover a question, it is instructed to say so instead of inventing specifics.
Beyond the answer, the same agent can create a Jira or Linear ticket or @mention the right person when human judgment is needed. Runbear connects to 2,000+ tools, needs no code, and setup takes about 10 minutes.
Runbear has limits too. It answers only from the sources you connect to each agent, so it does not replace an enterprise search index. When a Runbear agent reads a tool connected with per-user authentication, it uses the asker's own account and sees only what that person can access. Answers appear in the channel or DM where the question was asked, so an answer in a channel thread is visible to everyone in that channel. Documents you index into an agent's knowledge base are shared by everyone who can use the agent. Keep restricted files out of that index and away from agents that answer in open channels. Answers are only as current as the source documents, so someone still has to own them.
How to choose
- Your answers must be verified and owned by experts: Guru.
- You want a knowledge base that drafts its own fixes for you to review: Slite.
- You want to build a wiki from the questions people ask in Slack: Tettra.
- Your knowledge is spread across many systems and the company is large: Glean.
- Your answers are mostly in Slack and you are on Business+ or Enterprise+: Slack AI.
- Your answers sit in a few doc tools and questions often turn into a task: Runbear.
Before you commit, test any of them with 20 to 30 real questions from your help channel, and check each answer for accuracy and a correct source link.
FAQ
Can Slack AI answer from Google Drive or Notion?
From Google Drive, yes, on Enterprise+ (or Enterprise Grid with the legacy Slack AI add-on). An Org Owner or Org Admin turns on enterprise search and connects data sources, and members then connect their own accounts, so that content shows up in search, AI answers and Slackbot. Slack's enterprise search article names Google Drive and GitHub but not Notion, so check which sources your admins can connect.
Will employees see documents they should not?
It depends on the tool. Guru states that its agents enforce role-based permissions, Glean's index enforces each document's permissions, and Slite follows Slack's channel permissions for Slack content. In Runbear, tools connected with per-user authentication follow the asker's own access, while documents indexed into an agent are shared by everyone who can use that agent. Glean answers privately to the asker by default. A Runbear answer in a channel thread is visible to the whole channel, while a question asked in a DM is answered in that DM.
What should the bot do when the docs have no answer?
It should say the docs do not cover the question. Tettra's Kai assigns the question to an expert, Guru lets people flag a wrong answer for review, and a Runbear agent is instructed to say the documents do not cover the question and can @mention the right person when human judgment is needed.
