> we don’t have access to the Slack MCP
ok, why?
Show HN: Slack CLI for Agents
21–30 of 37 posts
Re: Show HN: Slack CLI for Agents
#22Haha. Nobody ever cared that some humans preferred to use services via a CLI versus GUI. But now that "AI" needs it, CLI programs and APIs get released left and right :D
So true!
And now, since bloated agent harnesses like Claude Code are the hot thing, AI promoters are calling MCP obsolete! (No need for HN's summer 2025 fad. Just write CLI tools!)
Re: Show HN: Slack CLI for Agents
#23what about a way to read channels rather than messages? seems missing?
also... any shortcut for UNREAD messages? for yknow making a recap
Re: Show HN: Slack CLI for Agents
#24Haha. Nobody ever cared that some humans preferred to use services via a CLI versus GUI. But now that "AI" needs it, CLI programs and APIs get released left and right :D
So true! And now, since bloated agent harnesses like Claude Code are the hot thing, AI promoters are calling MCP obsolete! (No need for HN's summer 2025 fad. Just write CLI tools!)
To me it never really clicked what MCP was/is, so I'm pretty happy with this development.
Re: Show HN: Slack CLI for Agents
#25> we don’t have access to the Slack MCP ok, why?
> The Slack MCP server is currently being rolled out to select partners.
Re: Show HN: Slack CLI for Agents
#26I believe in an MCP-less future of agent-service interactions and have recently submitted this general alternative (which also supports Slack) based on curl: https://github.com/imbue-ai/latchkey With that said, a specialized tool like this will almost certainly work better if Slack is the only service you want your agents to interact with. I like that the auth is transparent.
Care to write more about this?
Re: Show HN: Slack CLI for Agents
#27Using slack makes me so depressed. The interactions we have today pale in comparison to what we had in IRC 30 years ago. Of course I accept we're stuck with slack. I just have no clue what to write with such a limited interface. The above posted link is a great example of making the most of a tiny interface and coming up short compared to... 30 years ago
90% of people on IRC in the 90s used mIRC or BitchX. What features are missing in the modern slack client?
Re: Show HN: Slack CLI for Agents
#28Earlier quoted context omitted.
So true! And now, since bloated agent harnesses like Claude Code are the hot thing, AI promoters are calling MCP obsolete! (No need for HN's summer 2025 fad. Just write CLI tools!)
To me it never really clicked what MCP was/is, so I'm pretty happy with this development.
It's an extremely verbose way to list API endpoints.
Re: Show HN: Slack CLI for Agents
#29Haha. Nobody ever cared that some humans preferred to use services via a CLI versus GUI. But now that "AI" needs it, CLI programs and APIs get released left and right :D
It’s not that nobody cared, it’s that the cost of building and maintaining CLIs, relative to the usage they got, often didn’t make economic sense. In fact, this is the first time I’ve seen someone want to use Slack via a CLI, not a TUI, an actual CLI. APIs, on the other hand, had plenty of real usage and made business sense, so most services offered them.
With AI, two things have changed: (1) the cost of building a CLI on top of a documented API has dropped a lot, and (2) there’s a belief that “designed for agents” CLIs will enable new kinds of usage that weren’t practical before and that will move the needle on the bottom line.
Re: Show HN: Slack CLI for Agents
#30Oh this is smart! Reading where Slack stores the local data in your filesystem instead of using their API/MCP (which they charge for). Very clever; similar to OpenAI launching Atlas when websites start blocking bot requests--just build your own browser so your bot becomes an actual user.
I built this exact solution months ago, digging up Slack’s local storage but it failed because they had encryption on the db and the keys weren’t my account keys. Curious to see how they did it