Dibs On Stuff
The Slack and Discord bot that helps your team collaborate with shared servers, test environments, AI capacity and everything else.
Launch
The Art of Fighting Over Staging Servers
Hand-written by Alex Lance, 7th August 2026
Hand-written by Alex Lance, 7th August 2026
One innocent morning you push your changes to the staging server and
notify quality assurance that it's ok to test them.
Half a day passes by, and nothing is heard back. So you stop by the QA's desk, there is a puzzled look on their face. Your changes don't work. In fact they don't even appear to be deployed onto the staging server!
You see a message in Slack from a co-worker, it's timestamped from three hours ago: "Hey if nobody's using staging I'm just going to push my feature up for testing?"
Nobody replied to their message and it quickly got lost in the mess of conversation.
They thought staging was available. And there was no system in place to correct that. Awesome. You've entered the well-trodden world of shared environments - and sharing is hard.
Half a day passes by, and nothing is heard back. So you stop by the QA's desk, there is a puzzled look on their face. Your changes don't work. In fact they don't even appear to be deployed onto the staging server!
You see a message in Slack from a co-worker, it's timestamped from three hours ago: "Hey if nobody's using staging I'm just going to push my feature up for testing?"
Nobody replied to their message and it quickly got lost in the mess of conversation.
They thought staging was available. And there was no system in place to correct that. Awesome. You've entered the well-trodden world of shared environments - and sharing is hard.
What even is a...
A staging environment gives developers, testers, product managers, and
sometimes customers a place to see changes before they go live.
As they can be expensive there often aren't many staging environments, and without some kind of coordination you get problems:
A staging environment is clearly very useful, but when a team gets to a certain size, informal access will almost always lead towards hours wasted, in one way or another.
As they can be expensive there often aren't many staging environments, and without some kind of coordination you get problems:
- Someone deploys while someone else is testing
- A feature demo gets ruined because someone pushed code over yours
- Repetitive noise "who's on staging?" or lack of noise when someone forgets to notify the next person...
A staging environment is clearly very useful, but when a team gets to a certain size, informal access will almost always lead towards hours wasted, in one way or another.
Made up solutions
Some teams try to solve this with a shared document or a spreadsheet. Or
an Asana task. Or a DM conversation. Or a dedicated Slack channel that
immediately gets muted. Or a locking mechanism that works great until an edge-case
gets you. Or a colour-coded calendar that everyone forgets to update. These
are perhaps a little familiar?
It's cliche to say it, but: there's a better way.
It's cliche to say it, but: there's a better way.
How about a queue?
A queue makes ownership obvious:
A persistent and consistent place to find answers without guessing or messages. Multiple staging environments? Use multiple queues. Who's using what? Check the queues.
Anywhere multiple people need the same thing, there just might be an informal queue hiding underneath. There are significant advantages waiting to be unleashed when you make that queue visible and intentional.
- Alex is at the head of the queue, he is using staging right now
- Then Jamie is next
- Chris is waiting behind Jamie
- Alex has left the queue? Jamie's turn now
A persistent and consistent place to find answers without guessing or messages. Multiple staging environments? Use multiple queues. Who's using what? Check the queues.
Anywhere multiple people need the same thing, there just might be an informal queue hiding underneath. There are significant advantages waiting to be unleashed when you make that queue visible and intentional.
The tools we already use
Developers already spend most of their day in tools like Slack and GitHub (and perhaps their editor :)
the best workflow is the one that happens where developers already are.
Someone needs staging? It's a Slack command. Someone finishes? It's a Slack command. Everyone can see what is happening right there in Slack (or Discord) with minimal context switching.
Someone needs staging? It's a Slack command. Someone finishes? It's a Slack command. Everyone can see what is happening right there in Slack (or Discord) with minimal context switching.
Designed for Slack and Discord
So here's the pitch!
Dibs On Stuff runs right inside your Slack and Discord chat window. It provides a publicly visible list of queues - and who is in them. The person at the head of the queue has claimed the "thing", and the queue notifies the next person when it's their turn.
Dibs has been battle-tested over the last 5 years by almost every big name in tech and there are literally thousands of happy users using Dibs every day.
If you'd like to try out Dibs On Stuff, you can install it in two clicks and use a couple of queues free forever. There are (of course) also advanced plans with dedicated support, API access and a whole lot more. New installs can try out all the advanced capabilities for 30 days.
We think it will make a meaningful difference to your team - and we'd love to hear how it goes: thoughts@dibsonstuff.com
Dibs On Stuff runs right inside your Slack and Discord chat window. It provides a publicly visible list of queues - and who is in them. The person at the head of the queue has claimed the "thing", and the queue notifies the next person when it's their turn.
Dibs has been battle-tested over the last 5 years by almost every big name in tech and there are literally thousands of happy users using Dibs every day.
If you'd like to try out Dibs On Stuff, you can install it in two clicks and use a couple of queues free forever. There are (of course) also advanced plans with dedicated support, API access and a whole lot more. New installs can try out all the advanced capabilities for 30 days.
We think it will make a meaningful difference to your team - and we'd love to hear how it goes: thoughts@dibsonstuff.com
