slack-reply
Guidance for responding through Slack MCP: immediate acknowledgements, progress cadence, thread discipline, message templates, and failure handling. Use whenever Codex must reply to Slack mentions or share progress/results.
When & Why to Use This Skill
This Claude skill standardizes agent communication via Slack MCP, ensuring professional and consistent interactions. It provides a robust framework for immediate acknowledgments, structured progress reporting, and disciplined thread management to keep stakeholders informed throughout the task lifecycle. By implementing standardized message templates and failure handling, it enhances transparency and reliability in automated Slack workflows.
Use Cases
- Automated Task Acknowledgement: Instantly responding to Slack mentions with a summary of the task and an estimated timeline to set clear expectations for team members.
- Real-time Progress Tracking: Providing periodic updates and hourly status reports for long-running tasks, ensuring transparency and visibility without manual prompting.
- Standardized Reporting: Delivering final results, including code changes, test statuses, and PR links, using consistent templates to improve team readability and documentation.
- Incident & Error Communication: Professionally reporting technical blockers or Slack API issues within the relevant thread to facilitate quick resolution and human intervention.
| name | slack-reply |
|---|---|
| description | >- |
| Guidance for responding through Slack MCP | immediate acknowledgements, progress cadence, |
Slack Reply Skill
This skill standardizes communication via Slack MCP. From task start to finish, always reply in the same thread and share progress frequently.
Prerequisites
- Use
slack_reply_to_thread(orslack_post_messagewiththread_ts). channel_idandthread_tsare provided by FastAPI/Bolt; no need to re-fetch them.- Do not include secrets; if necessary, say "shared separately".
Immediate Acknowledgement Rules
- When you receive a mention or question, always reply in the same thread and acknowledge receipt first.
- Even if you cannot answer right away, state "starting work" and when you will report back.
- If a task or verification takes longer than 1 hour, post an interim update.
Progress Reporting Timing
- Task understanding: summary, plan, open questions.
- Main changes done: changed files, content, next action.
- Tests done: command and result (or reason for not running).
- Final report: change summary, commit/PR, TODOs, test status.
- For long work, add a short update every hour.
Message Templates
I understand the task. I will proceed as follows.
1. ...
2. ...
Let me know if anything is unclear.
Progress update: <what was done> is complete. Next, I will work on <next step>.
Done.
- Changes: ...
- Commit/PR: ...
- Tests: ...
Let me know if you need anything else.
Errors / Delays
- If a Slack API or MCP issue occurs, summarize the response, report it, and ask whether to retry.
- If you cannot proceed (e.g., waiting for approval), state that and give the next ETA.
Checklist
- Replied immediately in the instruction thread
- Shared progress at required timings plus hourly updates if long-running
- Clearly listed what was done and the next action
- Reported test results or the reason for not running
- Shared commit/PR info with link