Slack channel

AgentX connects to Slack via Socket Mode — no inbound webhook URL, no ngrok, just two tokens. The bot reacts to @mentions in channels and replies to DMs; mentions of other agents in the reply cascade through the normal bot-to-bot delegation chain (same behaviour as Telegram / Discord / WhatsApp).

Prerequisites

On the Slack side, create an app at api.slack.com/apps:

1. Socket Mode → enable. Generate an app-level token with the connections:write scope. It starts with xapp-….
2. OAuth & Permissions → add the following bot scopes:
   • chat:write
   • app_mentions:read
   • channels:history, groups:history, im:history, mpim:history
   • reactions:write
   • users:read
3. Event Subscriptions → subscribe the bot to:
   • app_mention
   • message.channels, message.groups, message.im, message.mpim
4. Install to workspace → copy the bot token (xoxb-…).

Install the optional deps

Kept out of the default install to keep the CLI lean for users who don't touch Slack:

npm install @slack/socket-mode @slack/web-api

(Or add both to your project's package.json if you've vendored AgentX.)

Configure

Two paths — pick one.

Dashboard (recommended): /admin → Channels tab → Slack section → paste the env-var names for the two tokens, optionally pick a default agent, hit Connect. Then put the actual token values in .env.

agentx.json directly:

{
  "channels": {
    "slack": {
      "enabled": true,
      "botToken": "${SLACK_BOT_TOKEN}",
      "appToken": "${SLACK_APP_TOKEN}",
      "agentBinding": "support"
    }
  }
}

# .env
SLACK_BOT_TOKEN=xoxb-...
SLACK_APP_TOKEN=xapp-...

Restart the daemon. The startup log reports Slack: enabled once it connects.

Routing rules

• DMs to the bot always route to the bound agent.
• Channels / groups / mpim only route when the bot is @-mentioned.
• Messages from other bots (bot_id or subtype=bot_message) are ignored — prevents bot-on-bot loops within a workspace.
• Responses are posted with mrkdwn: true by default (Slack's markdown). Pass parseMode: "plain" on the outgoing message to disable it.

Replies threading

When a user messages the bot inside an existing thread, the reply lands in the same thread. When the trigger is a top-level channel message, the reply is posted at the channel root.

Known limitations

• No slash-command support yet (the runtime is one-message-in → one-message-out).
• No file upload handling — attachments on incoming messages are dropped.
• Socket Mode means the daemon must be online to receive messages; if the daemon restarts, messages sent during the gap are lost. For business- critical workflows you'll want a webhook/EventBridge bridge (not shipped).