Slack

Read messages, search conversations, and look up users in the configured Slack workspace using the Slack Web API.

Configuration

• Token location: ~/.charliebot/credentials.yaml under slack.user_token
• Token type: User OAuth Token (xoxp-)
• Available scopes: channels:history, channels:read, groups:history, groups:read, im:history, im:read, mpim:history, search:read, users:read

API Reference

All requests require the header: -H "Authorization: Bearer TOKEN"

Read the token from ~/.charliebot/credentials.yaml (section slack, key user_token) before making any API calls:

python3 -c "import yaml,os;c=yaml.safe_load(open(os.path.expanduser('~/.charliebot/credentials.yaml')));print(c['slack']['user_token'])"

Authentication

GET https://slack.com/api/auth.test

Users

GET https://slack.com/api/users.list?limit=200

To find a user, match against real_name, name, and profile.display_name fields (case-insensitive).

Channels

GET https://slack.com/api/conversations.list?types=public_channel,private_channel&limit=200

Direct Messages

List all DM conversations:

GET https://slack.com/api/conversations.list?types=im&limit=200

Each DM channel has a user field — match it against the target user's ID to find the right channel.

Read Messages

GET https://slack.com/api/conversations.history?channel=CHANNEL_ID&limit=50

Use oldest and latest (Unix timestamps) to filter by date range. Use cursor for pagination.

Read Threads

GET https://slack.com/api/conversations.replies?channel=CHANNEL_ID&ts=THREAD_TS

Search Messages

GET https://slack.com/api/search.messages?query=QUERY

Supports Slack search modifiers: from:username, in:#channel, before:2026-01-01, after:2026-01-01, has:link, etc.

Important Workarounds

• Do NOT use conversations.open — it requires im:write scope which is not available. Instead, list DM conversations with conversations.list?types=im and find the channel by user ID.
• Do NOT use conversations.join or any write endpoints — only read scopes are available.

Workflow

1. Read the token from ~/.charliebot/credentials.yaml (slack.user_token)
2. If looking up a user, call users.list first to resolve the user ID
3. If reading DMs, call conversations.list?types=im to find the DM channel ID by matching the user ID
4. Call conversations.history to fetch messages
5. Use python3 to parse JSON responses for readability — format output with timestamps, sender names, and message text