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Show HN: Slack CLI for Agents

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Re: Show HN: Slack CLI for Agents

#31

Post by FranklinJabar »

iso1631 wrote: post #27
FranklinJabar wrote: post #13

Using 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?

Well for one, you had control of the client. Writing extensions, bots, useful scripts was trivial. Slack is rotted enterprise and webhook laden mess in comparison

Re: Show HN: Slack CLI for Agents

#32

Post by nwparker »

swyx wrote: post #23

what about a way to read channels rather than messages? seems missing? also... any shortcut for UNREAD messages? for yknow making a recap

There's a few open issues/PRs that I'm working on getting in! Feel free to drop any request there (it's the best way for me to track it).

For UNREAD messages... Sadly, I'm not sure that Slack has an official API for that. There may be an "unofficial" API there that we could discover, but I'm hesitant for adding support there. With that being said, it's not that I wouldn't entertain the idea (it would be REALLY useful) but it would require a bit more thought.

Re: Show HN: Slack CLI for Agents

#33

Post by swyx »

nwparker wrote: post #32
swyx wrote: post #23

what about a way to read channels rather than messages? seems missing? also... any shortcut for UNREAD messages? for yknow making a recap

There's a few open issues/PRs that I'm working on getting in! Feel free to drop any request there (it's the best way for me to track it). For UNREAD messages... Sadly, I'm not sure that Slack has an official API for that. There may be an "unofficial" API there that we could discover, but I'm hesitant for adding support there. With that being said, it's not that I wouldn't entertain the idea (it would be REALLY useful…

thanks yeah... am a total noob to the api so have no idea but i guess just based on principle if you can see everything the slack webapp sees then it stands to reason the info about the unread messages is SOMEWHERE in there

Re: Show HN: Slack CLI for Agents

#34

Post by nwparker »

swyx wrote: post #33
nwparker wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There's a few open issues/PRs that I'm working on getting in! Feel free to drop any request there (it's the best way for me to track it). For UNREAD messages... Sadly, I'm not sure that Slack has an official API for that. There may be an "unofficial" API there that we could discover, but I'm hesitant for adding support there. With that being said, it's not that I wouldn't entertain the idea (it would be REALLY useful…

thanks yeah... am a total noob to the api so have no idea but i guess just based on principle if you can see everything the slack webapp sees then it stands to reason the info about the unread messages is SOMEWHERE in there

Yeah you're definitely right, it's there. It's just an API they document so it's subject to change etc (which presents some challenges)

Re: Show HN: Slack CLI for Agents

#35

Post by nwparker »

stavros wrote: post #17
FranklinJabar wrote: post #13

Using 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

There are some great alternatives, like Zulip and Twist. Unfortunately, ~nobody uses them.

Slack Connect just has a network effect, TBH. It's hard to move away.

Re: Show HN: Slack CLI for Agents

#36

Post by Wuzzy »

barrenko wrote: post #26
Wuzzy wrote: post #7

I 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?

I think that a curl wrapper could serve as a universal integration with arbitrary services (as long as they have a public API), saving you a lot of setup complexity and context space. Authentication is the hard part; ideally, you shouldn't even need an OAuth intermediary. Which I think is doable: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46876636. It's still a bit of an experiment, though.

Re: Show HN: Slack CLI for Agents

#37

Post by mprsai »

Are you primarily using this for answering Slack threads and simplifying understanding of large threads? In addition to this, what else could it be used for? Trying to understand what all possibilities are unlocked with this
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