The loop
Nobody rolls this out. It spreads by being used.
No kickoff, no training, no email from HR asking everyone to take part.
One person adds it. It asks them one question. Whoever they pick hears something good about themselves — and the only way to find out who said it is to answer a question of their own. That's the entire engine, and it has been turning in one workspace since February.
One turn
Three seconds in, and it hands itself to somebody new.
01
A question arrives in your DMs.
kudoSnapAppQuick one — 3 seconds.
Who explains complex things the clearest?
- Otto Otter
- Kira Koala
- Felix Fox
- Penny Penguin
One question, four coworkers, one tap. No text box, no rating, nothing to write — and every question asks who is good at something, so there is nothing bad to put in it.
02
The person you picked hears about it.
kudoSnapAppA coworker said you're the best at explaining complex things.
1 person recognized you for this. Want to see who?
Immediately, in their own DMs, with no name attached. They may never have heard of kudoSnap — this is often the first thing they ever see of it, and it is a sentence about them rather than a pitch.
03
They want the name.
kudoSnapAppAnswer one quick poll to see who recognized you.
Everybody wants the name. Getting it costs one question of their own — which is the same question you started with, three seconds long, about somebody else on the team.
back to 01 ↑ And that question is where this started — except now it's somebody else's, and the person they pick is about to get a DM from an app they've never heard of.
Where those four names come from
From the public channels you share with people, and nothing else. Two people in the same six-person project channel probably work together; two people in #general probably don't. Small, focused channels count for more.
That's the whole signal. There has never been a message in it.
Receipts — how the map is built, and how often
Public channels only. Channels shared with other companies are skipped, and so is anything above 200 members — being in the same all-company channel says nothing about who you work with. Names starting proj-, team-, squad-, eng- and design- count for more; #general, #random, #all- and #announce count for less.
The map is built when kudoSnap is installed and rebuilt once a week after that, so a channel you joined on Tuesday counts by the following Monday. You need at least four connections before kudoSnap sends you anything, which is why very new or very isolated accounts stay quiet.
One question per weekday, between 9am and 4pm in your own timezone, at an hour that changes daily so it doesn't land at the same minute as everyone else's. If you're not on Slack when it's due it tries again later that day, and if you never come online that day's question simply doesn't happen.
One exception to the daily ceiling, and it's on your first day: answer your first question and a second arrives straight away. After that it's one a day at most. The same question won't come back for about three weeks — ten days at the very worst, if you've already been asked nearly everything — and the same person won't appear in your last four questions unless skipping them would leave fewer than four names to offer.
One of the four can be someone from outside your company. Once ten people in a workspace have revealed who praised them, a Slack Connect guest you share a channel with becomes eligible — at most one of the four, never more. If a coworker picks them, what they receive says “Someone at [your workspace] said…”, which names the company and never the person.
Why it closes
Curiosity is the only thing doing any work.
Nobody is being asked to be generous, and that is why this needs no reminder email. You wanted to know who said something nice about you. Getting the name costs one question about somebody else, and somebody else's afternoon improved on the way past.
Every recognition tool that needs a rollout is asking for generosity. This one is asking for three seconds of self-interest.
Two honest notes on the gate. Your first reveal is free once you've answered a single question — and after that, roughly one recognition in three arrives with a name you have to earn. The rest just tell you what was said. That's deliberate: a reward that arrives every single time stops being a reason to open the message.
Why it doesn't stall
Every answer creates the next one.
Five weekdays, one question a day, one name each. Nothing about that needs a champion, a launch or a nudge from anyone's manager.
- 1
You answer one question.
Three seconds, on a Tuesday, in a DM you were already looking at.
- 5
Five coworkers hear something good.
One question per weekday, one name each. Nobody was invited and nobody was told to roll anything out.
- 25
Each of them has the same week available.
This is the branch, not a promise — plenty of people will ignore theirs, and ignoring one is free by design.
What actually happened, in the one workspace we can check
Between 25 February and 3 August 2026, kudoSnap delivered 3,504 questions to 55 people. 53 of them answered at least one. 1,413 votes were cast, 60 different people were recognized, and it is still running.
Two things those numbers aren't. It is one workspace, so this is a demonstration rather than a benchmark — and about 40% of questions get answered, not ninety. Ignoring one is free and always will be; the number that matters to us is not how many get answered, it's that almost everybody answered something, and that the five months include June and July rather than one enthusiastic fortnight.
What it adds up to
Five months of three-second answers is a picture nobody could have drawn on purpose.
This is the part that makes the loop worth running rather than merely clever. Nothing here was written by a manager, filled in at review season, or answered by anyone who knew what it would add up to.
What you end up with
A reading of how the people around you actually see you, in twelve facets, with the strongest few turned over as cards. Private unless you publish it.
32 votes · 11 coworkers
What the tarot cards say
The Prism · Your primary archetype
You take the tangled beam and split it into colors everyone can see. People come to you to make sense of hard things.
The Forge — Ships. Builds. Done means done.
How your coworkers see you
Delivery — 10 votes · 6 coworkers
How you get things done, and get them right.
- Execution8
- Tough Calls2
- Untangling0
Thinking — 4 votes · 3 coworkers
How you work a problem, and see past it.
- Sharp Eye3
- Big Picture1
- Always Learning0
Connection — 12 votes · 7 coworkers
How work moves when you're working with people.
- Making It Clear8
- First to Help3
- Getting Alignment1
Multiplier — 3 votes · 3 coworkers
How people are better for having worked with you.
- Feedback That Lands2
- Making Room0
- Level Head1
Wildcards — 3 votes
The seasonal, just-for-fun ones. They count toward your total — they just don't shape your cards.
Note the two facets sitting at zero. Nobody has said those about this person yet — which is not the same as them not being true, and it is why the empty ones are shown rather than hidden.
What your company ends up with
Whether recognition is reaching people, which kinds of work this place notices, and how it moves between teams. Patterns, at workspace scale.
This month in your workspace
- of people heard something specific and good about themselves
- 63%of people heard something specific and good about themselves
- answered at least one question
- 71%answered at least one question
- people haven't been recognized yet
- 9people haven't been recognized yet
Most noticed: Connection, then Delivery
Everyone in this workspace can sign in and see this. There is no admin version with more in it.
The real one lives at admin.kudosnap.com. Sign in with Slack — if you're in the workspace, you're in.
Everyone in the workspace signs into the same one. No admin tier, no manager view, no ranking of anybody — and “nine people haven't been recognized yet” is a count, never a list.
The loop is what makes the data honest. Nobody was performing for it, because nobody could see it while they were filling it in.
The first turn
It only needs one person to start.
Add it and the first question lands in your own DMs today. Whoever you pick finds out somebody noticed, and the loop is running — no announcement, no admin approval, nothing for anyone to opt into.