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Slack

The Slack channel puts your agent in Slack as a bot. Employees message it directly and it replies in-thread, with streaming and an assistant-style experience where your workspace supports it. The bot works in direct messages only — each employee talks to the agent one-on-one. It doesn’t respond to @-mentions in channels and can’t be added to a channel conversation.

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What employees get

Beyond the conversation itself, the Slack experience includes:
  • Suggested prompts — starter chips when opening the bot (in workspaces with Slack’s AI assistant container; classic DMs show a plain conversation).
  • Voice messages — Slack voice clips are transcribed and answered as text (when you enable transcription).
  • Feedback buttons — thumbs up/down on answers, feeding the agent’s reporting.
  • Sources on demand — a “Show sources” toggle on answers that cite indexed content.
  • Forms and confirmations — structured forms for multi-field requests, and confirmation prompts before the agent takes an action; when a tool needs the employee’s own sign-in to another system, the consent card appears right in the DM.

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Before you start

You’ll need a Slack workspace administrator to create and approve the app. Cobalt generates an app manifest for you, so there’s nothing to configure by hand in Slack beyond creating the app and pasting two credentials back.

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Install it

1

Copy the manifest

On the Slack channel, copy the app manifest Cobalt generates for this agent.
2

Create the app in Slack

In Slack’s app settings, create a new app from a manifest and paste it in. This sets the name, scopes, and event subscriptions for you.
3

Paste the credentials

Install the app to your workspace, then copy its bot token and signing secret back into Cobalt.
4

Verify and test

Run verify. Cobalt checks the credentials and sends a test direct message so you can confirm the bot responds.

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Settings

On the channel’s settings you can configure:
  • Bot display name and icon — how the bot appears in Slack.
  • Suggested prompts — a few starter chips shown in a direct message.
  • Voice transcription — whether voice messages are transcribed.
  • AI disclaimer — the text and frequency (off, once, or always).
Changing the bot’s name or icon updates the app manifest. When that happens, re-apply the manifest in Slack’s app settings so the change takes effect there — Cobalt tells you when a re-apply is needed. The other settings take effect immediately.

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Pause and disconnect

  • Pause stops the agent from responding while keeping the app installed — useful during maintenance. Resume to turn it back on.
  • Disconnect removes the credentials and takes the channel offline.

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Slack as an integration

Connecting Slack as a channel (so employees can talk to the agent there) is separate from connecting Slack as an Integration (so the agent can search Slack on a user’s behalf). You can use either or both.

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Troubleshooting

That’s expected — the Slack bot works in direct messages only. Employees talk to it one-on-one, not in shared channels.
Name and icon changes update the app manifest, which Slack doesn’t pick up until you re-apply it in the app settings. Cobalt flags when a re-apply is needed; other settings take effect immediately.
They appear in the Slack AI assistant container. Workspaces without it fall back to a plain direct-message conversation, where the bot still works but doesn’t show starter prompts.
Re-check the bot token and signing secret — both must come from the app you created from Cobalt’s manifest, and the app must be installed to the workspace first.