Chief skips Slack messages that need no reply
In a thread Chief has answered in, side chatter no longer pulls a reply out of him, and the question you type right after still lands.
You ask Chief something in a Slack thread, he answers, and then the conversation carries on around him. Until now that follow-on chatter could pull an odd post out of him, including a raw internal marker that meant nothing to anyone reading the thread.
Quiet turns in threads
Chief now has a way to say nothing at all. When a message in a thread was not addressed to him and needs no answer from him, he leaves the thread alone instead of posting. If you named him in the message, you still get something back, even when the answer is that he has nothing to add.
Follow-ups without a re-mention
A quiet turn used to cost you the next question. You would say "thanks", Chief would stay silent, and the "can you also check Y" you typed straight after went unread.
Chief now looks back to his own last post rather than only at the message immediately before yours. Anything shortly after that post is still his to answer, and you can keep talking at him as long as you like with no one else cutting in, no second @Chief needed. Once the room has moved on to talking among itself, mention him again.
Approved actions still get a report
Pressing a button on one of Chief's cards counts as asking him directly. You get the report on what he did, rather than silence on the writes you just approved.
Thread replies from other apps in the channel no longer break your run either, so a build notification landing mid-conversation does not stop Chief from reading your next message.
Carry on in the thread as you would with a colleague. Mention Chief when you want him, and he will keep up from there.