acedatacloud There is no first-party Slack CLI fit for daily use, so we drive the
Slack Web API with curl + jq. The
user's OAuth bearer token is in $SLACK_TOKEN; every call needs it as
Authorization: Bearer $SLACK_TOKEN.
The Slack API ALWAYS returns 200 — check the JSON ok field for success.
A failed call has {"ok": false, "error": "<reason>"}. Surface the
error value verbatim to the user when it occurs.
Always start with auth.test to confirm the connection works AND
to learn what bot user / team you're posting as. Many subsequent calls
need the bot's user id (auth.test returns user_id).
Recipes
Verify auth (always run first)
curl -sS -H "Authorization: Bearer $SLACK_TOKEN" \
https://slack.com/api/auth.test
# {"ok": true, "team": "...", "team_id": "...", "user": "<bot>", "user_id": "U..."}
Resolve a channel name to its ID (you'll need this a lot)
curl -sS -H "Authorization: Bearer $SLACK_TOKEN" \
"https://slack.com/api/conversations.list?limit=1000&types=public_channel,private_channel" \
| jq -r --arg name "general" '.channels[] | select(.name == $name) | .id'
Post a message
curl -sS -X POST https://slack.com/api/chat.postMessage \
-H "Authorization: Bearer $SLACK_TOKEN" \
-H "Content-Type: application/json; charset=utf-8" \
-d "$(jq -nc \
--arg ch "C0123456789" \
--arg text "Deploy complete." \
'{channel:$ch, text:$text}')"
Reply in a thread
curl -sS -X POST https://slack.com/api/chat.postMessage \
-H "Authorization: Bearer $SLACK_TOKEN" \
-H "Content-Type: application/json; charset=utf-8" \
-d "$(jq -nc \
--arg ch "C0123456789" \
--arg ts "1777656720.123456" \
--arg text "Thanks!" \
'{channel:$ch, thread_ts:$ts, text:$text}')"
Search messages
curl -sS -G \
-H "Authorization: Bearer $SLACK_TOKEN" \
"https://slack.com/api/search.messages" \
--data-urlencode "query=in:#engineering deploy" \
--data-urlencode "count=20"
Send a DM to a user (by email)
USER_ID=$(curl -sS -G -H "Authorization: Bearer $SLACK_TOKEN" \
"https://slack.com/api/users.lookupByEmail" \
--data-urlencode "email=alice@example.com" \
| jq -r '.user.id')
# DM channels are auto-created the first time you postMessage to a user id.
curl -sS -X POST https://slack.com/api/chat.postMessage \
-H "Authorization: Bearer $SLACK_TOKEN" \
-H "Content-Type: application/json; charset=utf-8" \
-d "$(jq -nc --arg ch "$USER_ID" --arg text "Hi from the bot." '{channel:$ch, text:$text}')"
Upload a file to a channel
Two-step: create an upload URL, then complete.
UPLOAD=$(curl -sS -G -H "Authorization: Bearer $SLACK_TOKEN" \
"https://slack.com/api/files.getUploadURLExternal" \
--data-urlencode "filename=report.pdf" \
--data-urlencode "length=$(wc -c < report.pdf)")
URL=$(echo "$UPLOAD" | jq -r '.upload_url')
ID=$(echo "$UPLOAD" | jq -r '.file_id')
curl -sS -T report.pdf "$URL"
curl -sS -X POST https://slack.com/api/files.completeUploadExternal \
-H "Authorization: Bearer $SLACK_TOKEN" \
-H "Content-Type: application/json; charset=utf-8" \
-d "$(jq -nc --arg fid "$ID" --arg ch "C0123456789" \
'{files:[{id:$fid, title:"report.pdf"}], channel_id:$ch}')"
Notes
chat.postMessageto a public channel requires the bot to be a member of that channel. If you getnot_in_channel, callconversations.joinfirst (which also takes the channel id), then retry. Private channels and DMs need a manual invite — ask the user.- Always check
.okon the JSON response.not_authed/invalid_auth→ ask the user to re-authorize atstudio.acedata.cloud/console/connectors. - Channel ids start with
C(channels),D(DMs),G(private). Don't invent ids — always look them up viaconversations.listorusers.lookupByEmail. - Slack rate-limits aggressively;
Retry-Afteris in the response headers if you get a 429. Sleep and retry rather than parallelizing.