slack-api

name

slack-api

description

Read Slack from the agent — thread replies, channel history, user lookup and mention resolution, and opening a DM. Channel and thread resolve env-first ($SLACK_CHANNEL_ID / $SLACK_THREAD_TS) with a --channel fallback, so you can usually omit them. TRIGGER when asked to fetch a thread or channel history, find someone's user id, resolve a mention, or DM someone. This skill does NOT post, edit, delete or react — your answer is just the text you write, and progress goes through the slack-status skill.

slack-api — Slack Web API toolbox

Reading Slack, and nothing else. Built on the same @slack/web-api WebClient (from $SLACK_BOT_TOKEN) the chat surface uses.

This skill used to write. It could post, edit, delete, react, post ephemerals and set titles, and every one of those bypassed the surface: no update rationing, no markdown block, no one-answer-per-turn rule. The SKILL.md carried a warning asking the agent not to use chat.postMessage for its reply because it produced a duplicate message — a hazard documented rather than removed. Those commands are gone.

This skill does not write at all. Progress goes through slack-status, questions through slack-questions or slack-ask, pictures through slack-chart and slack-image, and a new thread through spawn-thread. Your answer itself is posted by the surface when the turn ends.

CLI usage

bun features/slack/skills/slack-api/scripts/slack.ts <command> [--flags ...]

On success it prints the Slack API response (or aggregated data) as pretty JSON and exits 0. On failure it prints ERROR: <message> to stderr and exits 1.

Channel & thread routing (env-first)

• --channel falls back to $SLACK_CHANNEL_ID. In most turns you can omit it and the toolbox posts in the current channel.
• Same-channel posts auto-use $SLACK_THREAD_TS — omit --thread-ts to reply in the current thread.
• A cross-channel post (target ≠ $SLACK_CHANNEL_ID, when that env var is set) requires an explicit --thread-ts <ts> or --no-thread.
• --no-thread posts a top-level (unthreaded) message.

Note on env availability: the agent currently runs in a separate process from the chat handler, so $SLACK_CHANNEL_ID / $SLACK_THREAD_TS may not yet be present as literal env vars. Until they are, pass --channel (and --thread-ts where needed) explicitly. The per-turn Slack context block injected into the prompt tells you the current channel/thread/user to use. The toolbox is already env-first, so when the framework begins threading those env vars (the parallel "B2" framework change) it works with zero changes.

Commands

conversations.replies

bun features/slack/skills/slack-api/scripts/slack.ts conversations.replies \
  --channel C123 --ts 1234567890.123456 [--limit 50]

Output: { messages: [...], hasMore }. hasMore is true when --limit was hit and Slack had more pages (detect silent truncation).

conversations.history

bun features/slack/skills/slack-api/scripts/slack.ts conversations.history \
  --channel C123 [--oldest 1700000000.000000] [--latest 1700009999.999999] [--limit 1000]

Output: { messages: [...], hasMore }, deduped by ts. --limit 0 = unlimited (capped at 10k — window large channels with --oldest).

conversations.open

bun features/slack/skills/slack-api/scripts/slack.ts conversations.open --users U123,U456

Response includes channel.id of the DM.

users.list

bun features/slack/skills/slack-api/scripts/slack.ts users.list [--search "Chris"]

Output: JSON array of { user_id, display_name, real_name }. Bots, deleted users, and USLACKBOT are excluded. Fetches live each call (no cache).

users.mention

bun features/slack/skills/slack-api/scripts/slack.ts users.mention --name "lab"
# → <@U05AJSRUVPT>

Always use the resulting <@USERID> form in posts — plain-text @name does not notify or link.

Notes / limitations

• Non-Marketplace Slack apps may be capped at 15 messages/request and 1 req/min for conversations.replies / conversations.history, so large fetches can be slow.
• This skill carries vendored Result / arg-parsing helpers (result.ts) rather than depending on a shared workspace package, matching the clickhouse skill's convention. Markdown is converted with slackify-markdown (the chat surface's dependency), not Perry's @ori-monorepo/egg.