slack-cli

A Slack CLI designed for coding agents (Claude Code, Cursor, etc.) that provides structured JSON access to Slack workspaces via the Web API.

It works by extracting authentication tokens from your existing browser session — no Slack app or bot token required.

Install

npm:

npm install -g @alankyshum/slack-cli

pip:

pip install slack-cli-agent

Manual:

git clone https://github.com/alankyshum/slack-cli.git
chmod +x slack-cli/bin/slack-cli
ln -s "$(pwd)/slack-cli/bin/slack-cli" ~/.local/bin/slack-cli

Prerequisites

• curl and jq (for all commands)
• python3 (for URL encoding)
• Node.js + Playwright (only for auth command)

npm install -g playwright
npx playwright install chromium

Quick Start

# 1. Authenticate (opens browser to extract tokens)
slack-cli auth --domain mycompany.slack.com

# 2. Search messages
slack-cli search "from:@alice in:#engineering deployment"

# 3. Read channel history
slack-cli read engineering 10

# 4. Draft a message (saved locally, not sent)
slack-cli draft general "Hey team, the fix for JIRA-123 is ready"

Commands

| Command | Description | |---------|-------------| | auth --domain <dom> | Extract tokens from browser session | | whoami | Show authenticated user | | config | Show current configuration | | search <query> | Search messages (full Slack query syntax) | | read <channel> [count] | Read channel messages | | unreads | Show recent activity | | draft <channel> <msg> | Save draft locally (does not send) | | drafts | List saved drafts | | send <draft_id> | Send a draft (with confirmation prompt) | | channels | List your channels | | dms | List recent DMs | | userinfo <user> | Look up user by ID, email, or name | | presence [user_id|username|email] | Show a user's presence status (active/away). Defaults to self. |

Search Modifiers

Slack's full search syntax is supported:

| Modifier | Example | Description | |----------|---------|-------------| | from: | from:@alice / from:me | Messages from a person | | in: | in:#channel / in:@user | Messages in channel or DM | | before: | before:2025-06-01 | Before a date | | after: | after:2025-01-01 | After a date | | on: | on:2025-03-15 | On exact date | | during: | during:january | During a month or year | | has: | has::eyes: / has:pin | Has reaction or pin | | is: | is:saved / is:thread | Saved or thread messages | | "..." | "exact phrase" | Exact phrase match | | - | -word | Exclude word | | * | deploy* | Wildcard (min 3 chars) |

Environment Variables

| Variable | Default | Description | |----------|---------|-------------| | SLACK_CLI_HOME | ~/.slack-cli | Config directory | | SLACK_CLI_CHROME_PROFILE | ~/.slack-cli/chrome-profile | Chrome profile for auth | | SLACK_CLI_COUNT | 20 | Results per page | | SLACK_CLI_SORT | timestamp | Sort: timestamp or score | | SLACK_CLI_SORT_DIR | desc | Direction: asc or desc |

How It Works

1. auth opens a Chromium browser using your existing Chrome profile (via Playwright), navigates to your Slack workspace, and intercepts the xoxc- API token and xoxd- session cookie from live API requests.

2. All other commands use direct Slack Web API calls via curl — no browser needed, making them fast and suitable for automation.

3. Drafts are saved locally to ~/.slack-cli/drafts.json. The send command requires interactive confirmation before posting.

4. All output is structured JSON, making it easy to parse with jq or consume from AI agents.

Security

• Credentials are stored at ~/.slack-cli/credentials.json with 600 permissions
• Tokens are xoxc- client tokens scoped to your user session
• The send command requires explicit y confirmation
• No data is sent to any third party

License

MIT