Slack Connector

The Slack connector continuously ingests messages from your Slack workspace into CortexDB. Messages are stored as message episodes with channel, author, and thread metadata.

Setup

1. Create a Slack App

1. Go to api.slack.com/apps
2. Create a new app from scratch
3. Add the following Bot Token Scopes:
   • channels:history -- Read messages from public channels
   • channels:read -- View channel info
   • groups:history -- Read messages from private channels (optional)
   • users:read -- View user info
4. Install the app to your workspace
5. Copy the Bot User OAuth Token (xoxb-...)

2. Configure the Connector

# Environment variables
CORTEX_SLACK_TOKEN=xoxb-your-bot-token
CORTEX_SLACK_CHANNELS=#engineering,#product,#incidents
CORTEX_SLACK_TENANT_ID=my-app
CORTEX_SLACK_NAMESPACE=slack

3. Start the Connector

# As part of CortexDB
docker run -d \
  -e CORTEX_SLACK_TOKEN=xoxb-... \
  -e CORTEX_SLACK_CHANNELS="#engineering,#product" \
  -e CORTEX_SLACK_TENANT_ID=my-app \
  cortexdb/cortexdb:latest \
  --enable-connector slack

# As a standalone process
cortexdb-connector slack \
  --token xoxb-... \
  --channels "#engineering,#product" \
  --tenant-id my-app

What Gets Ingested

| Slack Event | Episode Type | Content | |---|---|---| | Channel message | message | Message text | | Thread reply | message | Reply text (with thread metadata) | | File share | document | File description + extracted text | | Bot message | Skipped | Bot messages are ignored by default |

Episode Metadata

Each ingested message includes:

{
  "type": "message",
  "content": "We should migrate the payments service to CockroachDB.",
  "source": "slack",
  "author": "alice",
  "channel": "#engineering",
  "timestamp": "2026-03-15T10:30:00Z",
  "metadata": {
    "slack_ts": "1710502200.000100",
    "thread_ts": "1710502100.000050",
    "reaction_count": 3,
    "reply_count": 5,
    "workspace": "acme-corp"
  }
}

Configuration

| Variable | Default | Description | |---|---|---| | CORTEX_SLACK_TOKEN | Required | Slack bot token | | CORTEX_SLACK_CHANNELS | All public | Comma-separated channels | | CORTEX_SLACK_TENANT_ID | Required | Target tenant | | CORTEX_SLACK_NAMESPACE | slack | Target namespace | | CORTEX_SLACK_INCLUDE_BOTS | false | Include bot messages | | CORTEX_SLACK_INCLUDE_THREADS | true | Include thread replies | | CORTEX_SLACK_BACKFILL_DAYS | 30 | Days of history to backfill on first run | | CORTEX_SLACK_POLL_INTERVAL_SEC | 10 | Polling interval |

Backfill

On first run, the connector backfills the configured number of days of history. Subsequent runs process only new messages using Slack's cursor-based pagination.

# Backfill 90 days of history
cortexdb-connector slack --backfill-days 90