The CTO Podcast with Fexingo · 2026-07-26 · 7 min
In this episode, we explore how Slack evolved its API and platform architecture from a monolithic system to a modular, event-driven ecosystem capable of supporting over 8,000 integrated apps. We dive into the specific engineering decisions - adopting GraphQL, building a sandboxed runtime, implementing per-app rate limiting - that allowed Slack to scale from a handful of early bots to a marketplace processing billions of API calls per month. Along the way, we discuss the trade-offs between flexibility and reliability, and how the platform team managed backward compatibility during a multi-year migration without disrupting the developer experience. #Slack #PlatformEngineering #APIDesign #GraphQL #EventDrivenArchitecture #DeveloperExperience #Scalability #Microservices #Kafka #RateLimiting #BackwardCompatibility #IntegrationPlatform #TechPodcast #CTOPodcast #BusinessAndTechnology #FexingoBusiness #BusinessPodcast #PodcastEpisode Keep every episode free: buymeacoffee.com/fexingo
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