How Claude Tag works

 
 Claude Tag is Claude, working inside your team's Slack channels. An organization Owner gives it its own accounts to the tools your team uses, so it arrives already able to act, and anyone in a channel can tag it into a problem without setting anything up.
 
-When someone tags Claude in with a task, a working session starts for that thread. Claude works through the task and posts the result back into the conversation. It runs in an ephemeral cloud sandbox that Anthropic hosts, not on your local machine or inside your network.
+When someone tags Claude in at a channel's top level, the channel's own [session](/docs/claude-tag/concepts/glossary#session) picks the message up. A task that needs investigation, tools, or a longer exchange gets a working session in a thread under the message, and that thread binds to its own session from then on. Claude works through the task and posts the result back into the conversation. The work runs in an ephemeral cloud sandbox that Anthropic hosts, not on your local machine or inside your network.
 
 This page covers:
 

 
 Every session, in any channel, follows the same five-step loop.
 
-1. **The session starts.** Someone tags `@Claude` with a task, or a [scheduled routine](/docs/claude-tag/users/proactivity) runs.
+1. **The session starts.** Someone tags `@Claude` with a task that needs a working session, or a [scheduled routine](/docs/claude-tag/users/proactivity) runs. At a channel's top level, the channel's own session picks the message up and starts the thread's session.
 2. **A sandbox builds.** Anthropic builds an isolated working environment for this thread.
 3. **The working loop runs.** Claude works through the task with the channel's access, editing its checklist in place.
 4. **The result lands in the thread.** An answer, a doc, a chart, or a pull request.

 
 Two threads in the same channel are two separate sessions with separate sandboxes; sessions don't share state directly.
 
+A channel where Claude works at the top level, outside threads, also carries one session for the channel itself, separate from every thread's. That session reads the channel's top-level messages and handles top-level @-mentions, so context carries across separate top-level asks in the same channel; [What survives between replies](#what-survives-between-replies) covers how long it lives. For a task that needs investigation, tools, or a longer exchange, it starts a dedicated session in a thread under the message. At the channel's top level, [`!restart`](/docs/claude-tag/users/commands#restart-a-stuck-or-wrong-context-session) replaces the channel's session.
+
 Even with nothing connected, every session starts from the same baseline.
 
 * It reads its own thread and the channel's history, including pinned items

 
 ### One-off and scheduled tasks
 
-A session starts the same way whether a person triggers it or a schedule does. A mention starts a session for that one task, and the sandbox is released once it finishes. A routine runs the same loop on a schedule, a channel watch, or a repository event, with the channel's connections, so a recurring digest or watcher gets the same access a typed request would. See [set up routines](/docs/claude-tag/users/proactivity).
+A session starts the same way whether a person triggers it or a schedule does. A tagged task runs in its thread's session, and the sandbox is released once the work finishes. A routine runs the same loop on a schedule, a channel watch, or a repository event, with the channel's connections, so a recurring digest or watcher gets the same access a typed request would. See [set up routines](/docs/claude-tag/users/proactivity).
 
 ## Session context and memory