@chronicle.app/slack

Chronicle plugin for Slack message history, read from a slackdump export directory.

Exporting your data

Slack's own export supports public channels on all plans, including Free. Business+ and Enterprise also support private-channel and DM exports with the appropriate access; see Slack's export documentation. slackdump exports conversations your account can access — public and private channels, DMs, and group DMs (mpims) — to a local directory.

# Authenticate and export in Slack-export layout
slackdump export -o my-slack-export

This produces a directory like:

my-slack-export/
├── channels.json          # public/private channels
├── dms.json               # direct messages
├── mpims.json             # group DMs
├── users.json             # workspace members
├── <channel-name>/        # one dir per conversation
│   ├── 2024-03-13.json     #   messages, one file per day
│   └── attachments/        #   downloaded files (if exported)
└── attachments/           # top-level aggregate of all files

Attachments are only present on disk if you exported them with slackdump. Chronicle includes attachment metadata only when --attachments is enabled; otherwise attachments are omitted entirely. With that flag, extraction includes a contentPath for files found locally. Files not found locally are recorded as metadata only. Extraction does not store attachment bytes.

Usage

# Extract to stdout (Chronicle JSON-LD)
chronicle extract slack --input ./my-slack-export

# Include file attachments (with a contentPath for downloaded files)
chronicle extract slack --input ./my-slack-export --attachments

Use --since / --until for incremental or windowed extraction:

chronicle extract slack --input ./my-slack-export --since 2024-01-01

Configuration

• --input (required): the slackdump export, as a folder or zip
• --attachments: include file attachments (default: false)
• --since: only extract messages on or after this date
• --until: only extract messages on or before this date
• --limit: maximum number of records to extract (default 100; 0 for no limit)

Schema

This plugin maps Slack data onto the following Chronicle types:

• Messages → MessageAction whose result is a Message (source: slack, body, author, recipient)
• Users → Agent (resolved to a handle and name from users.json, group-DM metadata, and message profiles)
• File attachments → ImageObject / AudioObject / VideoObject / DocumentObject (by MIME type), with contentPath to the locally exported file when available

Recipients are inferred from the conversation type: a DM addresses the other person, a group DM addresses every other member, a small private channel addresses its members, and a public/large channel is treated as a broadcast (no recipients).

Development

# Build the plugin
npm run build -w @chronicle.app/slack

# Typecheck and lint
npm run typecheck -w @chronicle.app/slack
npm run lint -w @chronicle.app/slack

# Run tests
npm run test -w @chronicle.app/slack

Tests build a small synthetic slackdump export (made-up users, channels, DMs, and a group DM) in a temporary directory, so they never read the host's Slack data or accounts and never touch the network.