slack — Slack CLI

A lightweight Slack CLI for quick workspace interaction from the terminal. Two implementations — TypeScript (bun-first, published to npm) and Rust (native binary, cargo install) — share one command surface and are verified byte-for-byte by tests/parity.sh.

Features

• News — Activity feed showing recent mentions (to:me), grouped by day with human-readable timestamps
• Messages — Browse recent messages across joined channels
• Tail — Stream new messages from a channel in real time (like tail -f)
• Search — Full-text search across the workspace
• Send — Send messages to channels or DMs with a confirm-hash safety gate (prevents accidental sends)
• Dump — Bulk-export channel history as markdown

Output formatting

• DM channels display as @DisplayName, public channels as #channel-name
• Slack <@UID> mention tokens are resolved to display names
• Slack <!date^...> markup is rendered as human-readable dates
• Messages are grouped by day (Today / Yesterday / weekday)

Installation

TypeScript (npm, recommended)

One package, no native binaries, any platform with Node 18+.

npm install -g slack-term
# or: bun add -g slack-term  |  pnpm add -g slack-term

Note: Previously published as @snomiao/slack (now deprecated).

Rust (cargo)

cargo install --path rs

Both expose the same slack command.

Usage

# Activity feed (mentions directed to you)
slack news
slack news --limit 5

# Recent messages across joined channels
slack msgs

# Search messages
slack search "deploy"
slack search "deploy" --count 50

# Send a message (two-step confirm — quote #channel)
slack send "#general" "Hello team"
# Prints preview + confirm hash; rerun with --confirm=<hash> to actually send
slack send "#general" "Hello team" --confirm=<hash>

# Bulk export channel history
slack dump --days 7 --filter eng

# Stream new messages in real time (Ctrl-C to stop)
slack tail "#general"
slack tail "#general" --since=10m   # backfill last 10 minutes first
slack tail "#general" --thread=<ts> # follow a single thread
slack tail "#general" --me          # only messages that mention you

tail — real-time message stream

slack tail polls a channel every 3 seconds (configurable via --interval) and prints new messages as they arrive, in the same [ts] @handle: text format as the read command.

slack tail "#symval"               # follow new messages from now
slack tail "#symval" --since=30m   # backfill 30 minutes, then stream
slack tail "#symval" --thread=1700000000.000100   # one thread only
slack tail "#symval" --me          # only messages mentioning you

Note: Cross-channel mention streaming (--me without a target) is not yet supported — a target channel is required.

Configuration

Requires a Slack user token (xoxp-...) with the following scopes:

• search:read — for search and news
• channels:history, groups:history, im:history, mpim:history — for message history
• channels:read, groups:read, im:read, mpim:read — for channel listing
• users:read — for resolving display names
• chat:write — for sending messages

Set the token via environment variable:

export SLACK_MCP_XOXP_TOKEN=xoxp-...

Or place it in ~/.config/slack-cli/.env or a local .env file.

See SKILL.md for a full token-acquisition walkthrough.

Development

# TypeScript
bun install
bun run dev -- news --limit 3      # run straight from source
bun run typecheck
bun run build                      # produces dist/cli.js

# Rust
cargo run --manifest-path rs/Cargo.toml --release --bin slack -- news --limit 3

# Parity test (requires a token — compares Rust and TS stdout)
bun run test:parity

Dependencies

TypeScript impl — zero runtime deps; uses built-in fetch, node:crypto, node:util argument parsing.

Rust impl

• clap — CLI argument parsing
• reqwest — HTTP client for Slack Web API
• tokio — async runtime
• chrono — date/time formatting
• ring — SHA-256 for confirm hashes

Release notes

v0.x — 2026-05-15: slack tail

New tail subcommand streams channel messages in real time using poll-based delivery (3-second interval). Supports --since=<duration> for backfill, --thread=<ts> to follow a single thread, and --me to filter for messages that mention you. Uses conversations.history?oldest=<ts> as a cursor so already-seen messages are never re-printed, even across reconnects.

Related / prior art

• slkcli by @therohitdas — a macOS-only Node CLI that auto-extracts xoxc- session tokens from the Slack desktop app. Different tradeoffs (zero-config on macOS vs. our cross-platform explicit-token approach). See docs/comparison-slkcli.md for a full UX side-by-side.
• docs/ecosystem.md — survey of other terminal Slack tools (official, slack-term, wee-slack, slackcat, slackdump, …).

License

MIT