DIBS ON STUFF

For taking turns in Slack
and now also, Discord


Add to Slack     Add to Discord

Dibs On Stuff was used
over 29,000 times in 2022
over 190,000 times in 2023
(mostly for claiming staging/test servers)



Just enter /dibs on THING
If no one is using the THING, it's yours. Otherwise you join the queue and will get a Slack/Discord notification once it's your go.

Dibs is the friendly way to take turns with anything.

More?
If you activate the extra features you can use buttons instead of typing, or use timers to automatically release your queues, and so much more.
Extra features
  • An entire organization can get access to the extra features for $10 or $29 (Pro) per month
  • No per-team-member charges, or credit card bills that "scale with you"
  • Dibs is privacy friendly (see below) and provides a suite of features unmatched


Feature Free Extra Pro
Unlimited queues
Unlimited team members
Unlimited /dibs on and /dibs off
Unlimited Slack channel usage
Bump the THING to the next person in line
Automatic /dibs off after a specified duration
Allow only approved queue names
Add reasons for calling dibs on things
Slack buttons for less typing
Random queues for delightful surprises
Secret queues with people's names hidden
Queue nudging for conch-hogs
Abbreviations for queue names
API access
Restrict queues to particular Slack channels
Automatic re-queuing for job roster queues
Enforce timers on queues
Queue jumping (just in case)
Queue renaming
Access to analytics (work in progress)




Extra #1
Automatic release

Automatically release the item after an amount of time that you specify.

Use the keyword "for" to indicate the time period.

/dibs on server1 for 45 min

Extra #2
Add a description

Help other team members understand more, by stating a short description.

Use the keyword "because" to indicate the reason.

/dibs on server1 because issue #4758

Extra #3 Pro
API access

Manipulate items inside your instance of Slack from the API. See conchable.com for more API info. Eg:
curl https://conchable.com/seize
 -X POST
 -H 'X-Api-Key:YOUR_KEY'
 -H 'Content-type:application/json'
 -d '{
       "conch": "SLACK_TEAM/CONCH",
       "slack_team_id": "TEAM_ID",
       "name": "SLACK_USERNAME"
     }'
Extra #4
Approved names

Ability to define a fixed list of approved item names.

No more spelling errors, eg: "/dibs on staging" works, but "/dibs on stageing" won't.

/dibs set staging approved

/dibs on stag (and abbreviation works)
Extra #5
Buttons!

One-click buttons for a richer Slack interface:

Extra #6 Pro
Repeating Queues

Great for roster duty or taking turns with after hours support or any other turn taking event that repeats day after day.

Once a person discards the THING, they'll automatically get placed onto the end of the queue again.

/dibs set water-cooler-refill repeat

Their job will be to fill up the water-cooler, and it will only be their turn again, once everyone else has had their turn.
 
Extra #7
Random Queues

Can't decide who the lucky person is today? Better than drawing names from a hat, use a random queue to decide who's next!

For even more mischief mix and match it with Secret queues to prevent anyone peeking at the order of people in the queue.

Just update the relevant THING to make it random and secret eg:

/dibs set feed-fish random
/dibs set feed-fish secret

And don't forget you can always use wildcards to specify multiple queues, eg

/dibs set chores/* random
 
Extra #8 Pro
Separate Queues For Separate Slack channels

Per-Slack-channel queues so you can keep separate collections of queues in separate Slack channels.

For example, a #parking channel to contain the car parking conches - and a separate #deploy channel to handle the staging server conches.

Running:

/dibs set carpark3 approved parking
/dibs set staging approved deploy

will keep different types of conches in separate channels.
 


Privacy Policy
The information that is put into this service is used only to run this service. No spam. No data collection. Here are the long versions Privacy Policy and Terms of Service.

And the plain fact from the Slack app store about what data Dibs is able to collect, compared to another similar app:

Contact me
Any questions or support queries: trouble @ conchable.com
Alex Lance
Other projects
Some other stuff I've been working on:

tfstate.com bring your terraform infrastructure a bit closer
Conchable.com a general API for queuing systems - the engine underneath Dibs On Stuff
Autoexpire.com transfer sensitive information to your clients (for sharing passwords or other credentials, and customizing the security controls)
Streetmates.net join up the people in your street in a non-intrusive fashion (give each street on the planet a mailing list)

 

 
Alex Lance ABN 87 223 400 386