Slack Integration

Connect omnideck to Slack for DMs, threads, and channel mentions — locked to the users you allow, with reactions, live status, and mid-response cancellation.

Connect Slack to omnideck

This guide gets omnideck talking to you through Slack: DMs, threads, and any public or private channel you invite the bot into. It only responds to the people you allow — by default, just you — and you can stop it mid-response with "stop," "cancel," or just deleting your message.

You'll do three things, in this order:

1. Set up the Slack app
2. Collect the handful of values the bridge needs
3. Paste one prompt into omnideck, which fetches the bridge script and starts it for you

No terminal commands for you — omnideck handles the setup, including keeping the bridge running across crashes and restarts. Depending on your environment it may set up a process supervisor (systemd, cron, or a wrapper script); it will tell you what it used and how to check the logs.

Step 1: Set up the Slack app

Create the Slack app

1. Go to api.slack.com/apps and click Create New App.
2. Choose From an app manifest.
3. Select the workspace you want the bot in.
4. Paste the manifest from this Gist *(switch the editor to the JSON tab if it defaults to YAML).
5. Click Next, then Create.

Feel free to rename "Omni" to whatever you want your bot called first — the manifest is just a starting point.

Why these specific scopes and events, and nothing more: this manifest only grants what the bridge script actually uses (read/post messages, read/write files, add reactions). Fewer permissions means less exposure if a token ever leaks.

Install the app to your workspace

Creating the app from a manifest doesn't install it yet — you still need to do this once.

1. In the left sidebar, go to OAuth & Permissions.
2. Click Install to Workspace.
3. Review the permissions and click Allow.

Step 2: Get the data for the connection

Collect your tokens

You need two tokens, from two different pages.

Copy both somewhere safe for a moment — you'll hand them to omnideck in Step 3.

Get your Slack user ID

By default the bridge is locked down to respond to exactly one person: you. It needs your Slack user ID to do that. (You can allow more people later — see the environment variable reference below.)

1. Click your profile picture in Slack (top right).
2. Click Profile.
3. Click the More (•••) button on your profile card.
4. Click Copy member ID.

You'll get something like U0123ABC456. That's it.

(Menu wording can shift slightly between Slack versions — if you don't see "Copy member ID" in that exact spot, it's usually one click away in the same profile card.)

Invite the bot to any channels you want it in

The bot only sees messages in channels it's actually a member of — this is true for public channels too, not just private ones. For each channel you want it active in:

/invite @Omni

(swap in whatever name you gave the bot in Step 1). DMs don't need this — you can just message the bot directly once it's running.

Step 3: Set up the bridge in omnideck

Now hand everything off to omnideck. Paste the prompt below into omnideck, filling in your own values first:

- `<SLACK_BOT_TOKEN>` — your `xoxb-...` token from Step 2
- `<SLACK_APP_TOKEN>` — your `xapp-...` token from Step 2
- `<YOUR_SLACK_USER_ID>` — your `U...` ID from Step 2

The script itself is already linked below:
`https://gist.githubusercontent.com/rlnorthcutt/33751b3b79af10b872d65b44038e0a61/raw/slack_bridge.py`


Set up my Slack bridge. Do this:

1. Save the Python script from this URL as slack_bridge.py:
   https://gist.github.com/rlnorthcutt/33751b3b79af10b872d65b44038e0a61/raw/f3932f378eb0ecdacbc1dcea2bd6e66f79ae3f45/slack_bridge.py

2. Install its dependencies (slack-bolt, slack-sdk, aiohttp) if they aren't
   already available.

3. Set these environment variables for the process:
   SLACK_BOT_TOKEN=<SLACK_BOT_TOKEN>
   SLACK_APP_TOKEN=<SLACK_APP_TOKEN>
   ALLOWED_USER_IDS=<YOUR_SLACK_USER_ID>

   Leave OMNIDECK_URL and OMNIDECK_PROFILE_ID unset unless I tell you
   otherwise — they default to this omnideck instance and the "omnideck"
   profile.

4. Run the script so it keeps running persistently in the background (not
   just for this session) and will restart automatically if it crashes or
   this machine reboots.

5. Confirm it started successfully and tell me how to check its logs later
   if I need to.

If anything above is missing or unclear, ask me before proceeding — don't
guess at token values or skip a step.

omnideck will ask you for anything you left blank. Once it confirms the bridge is running, you're done — no separate terminal session required.

Keep those tokens private. Treat xoxb- and xapp- values like passwords — anyone with the bot token can act as your bot in Slack.

Optional: Give the bot its own personality

By default the bridge talks to your main omnideck profile — the same orchestrator you use for real work. That works, but the replies tend to be long and formal, and every message runs with an unbounded token budget.

For a better Slack experience, create a dedicated profile and point the bridge at it. Paste this into omnideck and edit the personality to taste:

Create an agent profile called "slack_bot" for use through the Slack
bridge. Personality: friendly and concise, short paragraphs suited to
Slack, calls me by first name, light humor, no corporate speak, and likes
dropping one pop culture reference per reply (80s/90s/00s).

Skills: assistant, routine_planner, personal-context, and write-code
(needed so it can update plans and artifacts when I ask). Do NOT allow
spawning sub-agents or loading additional skills.

Keep it cheap to run: num_predict 1024, max_iterations 8,
context_window 131072, think false.

Then set OMNIDECK_PROFILE_ID="slack_bot" in the Slack bridge env file
(~/slack-bridge/env) and restart the bridge so it picks up the new
profile.

You can shape the persona however you like — the profile's system prompt is just instructions. What matters structurally: limited skills, no spawning, and a capped output and iteration budget, so a Slack message can never turn into a long agent session.

Verify it's working

Send the bot a DM, or @mention it (using the name you gave it in Step 1) in a channel you invited it to. You should see, in order:

1. A 🤔 reaction appear on your message (it saw you)
2. A reply posted in-thread
3. A ✅ reaction replacing the 🤔 once it's done

Try sending "stop" partway through a long response — it should cancel and show 🛑 instead of ✅. Deleting your message mid-response does the same thing.

If none of that happens, jump to Troubleshooting below.

Environment variable reference

Troubleshooting

What this bot can and can't do

Can:

• Reply to DMs and thread replies
• Respond to @mentions in any channel it's been invited to (public or private)
• Read and forward file attachments you send it
• Post back files omnideck generates
• Show a live "thinking" status and a done/cancelled reaction on your message
• Be stopped mid-response with "stop," "cancel," or by deleting your message

Can't (by design, to keep this simple and locked-down):

• Respond to anyone you haven't allowlisted (ALLOWED_USER_IDS)
• React to other people's reactions, run polls, or post to Slack Lists/Canvas — none of that is wired up in this version
• Recover messages sent during an actual outage (no polling fallback)