Slack

Slack

Use Slack as a governed provider boundary without turning Slack—or Runx Cloud—into the owner of the operator's workflow. This skill owns the reusable Slack reading mechanics that an agent should not have to reconstruct: bounded message search, bounded thread hydration, permalink resolution and image reads. Delivering a post or a reply is message-send's job.

The operator-selected provider binding has one narrow role in this flow: retain credential custody and execute a fixed Slack operation. It may be local, self-hosted, third-party, or Runx-hosted. The skill, its procedure, approval point, retry identity, and completion rule remain in Runx OSS. Any queue, team-specific routing rule, or durable action state belongs in a higher-level operator skill.

Runners

search reads one bounded Slack search page. Supply a query object with at least one of author_external_id, mentions_connected_subject, or keywords. The exact fields are:

• author_external_id: one Slack member id string, such as U123ABC
• mentions_connected_subject: a boolean selecting messages that mention the member bound to the selected provider account
• keywords: one keyword-mode search phrase string, not an array and not raw Slack search syntax
• after and before: ISO-8601 timestamp strings, with after earlier than before
• channel_types: a non-empty array drawn from public_channel, private_channel, mpim, and im
• limit: an integer from 1 through 20
• cursor: the opaque next_cursor from the preceding page

The provider rejects embedded Slack modifiers in keywords, enforces the maximum page, and returns normalized locators and bounded previews rather than a raw Slack response. Continue only from next_cursor; one page is never proof that a workspace scan is complete.

read_thread reads one bounded thread page from an exact slack://workspace/channel/timestamp locator. The limit is capped at 15 because Slack applies a low limit and, for some non-Marketplace installations, a very low request cadence to conversations.replies. Hydrate only threads that are actually needed, preserve next_cursor, and do not fan out speculative reads. Thread messages include bounded attachment metadata and opaque slack-file://workspace/file locators; private Slack download URLs never cross the provider boundary.

read_link accepts one exact Slack archive permalink and reads the same bounded thread page. Use it when an operator pastes a normal https://workspace.slack.com/archives/channel/message link and therefore does not have the workspace id required by a canonical locator. The provider binding validates the permalink, binds it to the authenticated workspace identity, and returns the canonical slack://workspace/channel/timestamp locator. A reply permalink's thread_ts identifies the root; Slack's redundant cid must match the path channel. This runner requires only thread.read, never a search grant.

read_file reads one image attachment from an exact file locator returned by read_thread. It requires file.read, verifies the file through Slack, restricts downloads to Slack's private file origin, accepts images only, and caps decoded bytes at 5 MiB. The result contains the MIME type, content digest, and base64 bytes so the caller can inspect the image without receiving the Slack credential or private URL.

Replies go through message-send: plan_reply binds a proposed reply to the exact canonical thread and its digest, and deliver_reply posts it once after approval and reads it back; reply delivers a reply bound to a source packet. Use message-send send for a proactive top-level channel post. A product-owned skill may add team-specific triage and compose these skills, but must not copy their provider transport, approval, idempotency, readback, or queue logic.

Authority and privacy

Reads resolve a compatible Slack binding for messages.search, thread.read, or file.read and do not ask for human approval. Runx supplies the idempotency key once, and the selected transport verifies the registered operation and its read/mutate class against the bound provider authority.

The skill never receives a Slack token, constructs HTTP, or stores a raw provider envelope. Search and thread outputs contain bounded previews because the operator needs context. Reply receipts contain only stable locators, timestamps, and a content digest; they do not echo the delivered message.

Stop conditions

• Refuse a missing, ambiguous, revoked, wrong-provider, or insufficient-scope Slack binding. Never fall back to a token, webhook, browser, or provider-specific script.
• Stop when a search has no structural selector, uses an unsupported modifier, or asks for more than one bounded page per turn.
• Stop when an attachment is not an image, exceeds 5 MiB, belongs to another workspace, or resolves outside Slack's governed private-file origin.
• Stop on malformed permalinks, unsupported permalink query fields, cross-workspace locators, or thread/message channel mismatch.
• Do not infer that a request is resolved from Slack prose. Record resolution, waiting, follow-up, or dismissal explicitly in the owning operator workflow.
• Do not claim complete scan coverage while a cursor remains.

Worked flow

An operator can search for direct mentions or start from a pasted Slack permalink. They hydrate only the actionable thread, preserve its canonical locator, then pass that normalized observation to a team-specific triage skill. If a reply is needed, message-send plan_reply binds the proposed text to the exact canonical thread. A changed draft fails before approval. An approved unchanged reply is posted once, then read back from the exact returned message locator before Runx seals the effect.

Operator conversation handoff

assistant_scan returns one bounded search page and its continuation cursor; assistant_observe binds each message to its source identity. Hydration checks that identity against the canonical open action before reading the thread. The resulting runx.source_packet.v1 supplies workflow_inputs.thread with the exact source and thread bindings, message evidence and coverage flag, plus source_complete for conversation-review#operate. Missing source messages, truncated content or another page keep coverage incomplete. The consumer holds that work rather than treating a partial thread as resolved.