slackx

slackx Skill

slack-cached is a small Python CLI that caches Slack threads, channel messages, users, and channels to a local SQLite database. Given a Slack thread URL (or an explicit channel id and root timestamp), it fetches the thread via conversations.replies and stores every message. On subsequent runs it only fetches new replies (and detects edits) by passing oldest to the API based on the highest cached ts.

It is the single source of Slack thread content for every other Slack skill: slack-resolve-threads reads threads through slack-cached show, and the knowledge-base skills use it to cache and render conversations.

Prerequisites

Binary

Check whether the binary is on PATH; install from the source repo if not:

if ! command -v slack-cached &>/dev/null; then
  git clone https://github.com/TomzxCode/slackx /tmp/slackx
  uv tool install /tmp/slackx
fi

If uv tool install isn't desired, run it in place with uv run --project /tmp/slackx slack-cached .... Confirm it works: slack-cached --help.

Authentication

Credentials are loaded in this order:

1. A .env file in the current working directory, if present. Source it before invoking slack-cached so the variables become real environment variables:

   if [[ -f .env ]]; then
     set -a
     source .env
     set +a
   fi
   

   The file uses KEY=VALUE lines (same keys as below). Existing environment variables always win over .env values, so explicit exports or CI secrets are never overridden.
2. Environment variables: SLACK_TOKEN (and optional SLACK_COOKIE for xoxc/web-client tokens).
3. A config file at $XDG_CONFIG_HOME/slack-cached/config (defaults to ~/.config/slack-cached/config). It uses a simple KEY=VALUE format:

   SLACK_TOKEN=xoxb-...
   SLACK_COOKIE=...
   SLACK_API_BASE_URL=https://slack.com/api
   

An xoxc- browser token also requires its matching xoxd- d cookie (SLACK_COOKIE); both values must come from the same browser session. Bot tokens (xoxb-) only need SLACK_TOKEN.