HeliosHELIOS DOCS

Slack

The Slack integration lets Helios agents search and call the entire Slack API to post messages, manage channels, work with files and canvases, and run automatically on new messages.

What your agents can do

Helios agents don't pick from a preset list of Slack actions. They semantically search Slack's entire API and call any method directly, with authentication injected server-side - so anything the Slack API exposes, an agent can do in your workspace.

  • Post, update, and thread messages in channels and DMs
  • Read channel history and search across the workspace
  • Create, join, and manage channels
  • Upload, read, and share files
  • Create and update canvases
  • Add reactions and read who reacted

Authentication

MethodTypeDescription
Helios Slack app (Recommended)OAuth 2.0Install with a single redirect; Helios manages tokens
BYO Slack appOAuth 2.0You supply your app's client ID, secret, and bot token

See Integration authentication for how credentials are stored and injected.

The default and recommended path. When you create the integration, Helios redirects you to Slack to approve the workspace install, then stores and refreshes the tokens for you.

On top of the workspace install, each user completes a one-time per-user authorization so their agents act with the right Slack identity.

BYO Slack app

Bring your own Slack app when you need custom branding or your own scopes.

  1. Go to Slack App Management.
  2. Click Create New App → From scratch and configure OAuth scopes and event subscriptions.
  3. Install the app to your workspace.
  4. In Helios, provide the client ID, client secret, and a bot token (xoxb-…).

Token rotation is not supported for BYO bot tokens - Helios uses the xoxb-… token you provide as-is.

Scopes

The Helios Slack app requests the scopes agents commonly need.

  • Bot scopes: app_mentions:read, channels:history, channels:join, channels:manage, channels:read, chat:write, chat:write.public, commands, files:read, files:write, groups:history, canvases:*, emoji:read
  • User scopes: channels:read, channels:history, channels:write, chat:write, files:read, groups:history, groups:read, im:write, search:read

Triggers

Slack is one of only three integrations that emit event triggers into Helios, so a Workflow can run an agent automatically when a message is posted.

EventDescriptionFilters
message.channelA message posted in a public channelchannel (optional)
message.groupA message posted in a private channelchannel (optional)

Omitting the channel filter matches all channels the bot can see. See Triggers for how to attach these to a Workflow.

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