Slack notifications

Slack notifications are off by default. Enabling them publishes selected archive content beyond the current machine and into the workspace’s retention, administration, export, and app-access boundary.

Slack receives content, not just a notification

Summaries contain session recaps. The firehose posts user and assistant turns whole into a thread. Hansard reads redacted normalized archive output rather than raw provider files, but redaction is pattern-based and can miss sensitive text. An empty repository filter or route selector matches all eligible sessions.

Posting surfaces

Hansard provides three independent Slack surfaces:

• Summaries post one recap after a session has been quiet for the configured interval, 10 minutes by default.
• Firehose batches live user and assistant turns into one thread per session, every 45 seconds by default. Tool calls are omitted unless notify.slack.stream.includeTools is explicitly enabled.
• Digest posts a daily aggregate grouped by person or device, with session, repository, model, and token totals for its configured lookback window.

Imported web-chat history and SDK batch jobs are excluded from the live firehose. A resumed session opens a fresh thread containing only new turns.

Before setup

• Decide which repositories or owners may post.
• Create dedicated destination channels.
• Use a separate Slack app or token when routes require distinct identities.
• Confirm the workspace’s message retention and export policy.
• Review Redaction and test representative synthetic content.

The guided setup creates a personal Slack app whose manifest requests chat:write and chat:write.customize. The second scope lets firehose turns use per-speaker names; if it is unavailable, posts fall back to the ordinary bot identity. Hansard does not request read access to Slack messages.

Guided setup

1. Start the guided flow.

   hansard notify slack setup

   The command opens Slack’s app-creation page with a manifest, verifies the bot token, asks for channel IDs, and sends a test post. It therefore performs an external write before it completes.

2. Invite the bot to each configured channel in Slack.

3. Review the saved state and preview the ordinary test message.

   hansard notify slack status
   hansard notify slack test --dry-run

4. Send the test only after its channels and content are correct.

   hansard notify slack test

Restrict the default configuration

The manual interface can enable summaries and firehose independently:

hansard notify slack enable \
  --summaries on \
  --summary-channel C0123456789 \
  --quiet-minutes 10 \
  --firehose off \
  --repos github.com/example-org/example-repo

If --repos is empty, the legacy default route matches all eligible sessions. Use explicit routes when different repositories, owners, providers, paths, or configured folders should post to different channels.

Routes and named credentials

A session fans out to every matching route in order. An exclusive matching route stops evaluation and prevents later routes from also receiving it.

Store a named token interactively so it does not need to appear in a command line or human-edited config:

hansard notify slack token add example-bot

Named tokens are kept in a mode-0600 local token file. CLI and viewer status surfaces show only the name and a masked tail.

Add a restricted route that references the stored token:

hansard notify slack route add \
  --match-owners example-org \
  --summary-channel C0123456789 \
  --token ref:example-bot \
  --exclusive

Inspect route order and effective channels without posting:

hansard notify slack route list

Routes can also match repositories, providers, local path prefixes, configured folders, and devices. Unlike Team selectors, Slack routing is local policy, so machine-local fields are allowed.

Digest preview

After configuring the digest in Settings → Slack, preview the complete message without posting:

hansard notify slack digest run --dry-run

An empty digest window posts nothing.

Delivery and retention

Going offline pauses posting but never archiving. Failed Slack writes keep their place and retry, so delivery is at least once rather than exactly once. To avoid flooding a channel, a backlog larger than 20 turns for one session posts only the most recent 20 plus a skipped-count note; the local archive still contains the full session.

Disable future posting with:

hansard notify slack disable

Disabling Hansard does not remove messages already retained by Slack. Delete or expire those messages through Slack’s controls and revoke the app token when a connection is retired.