Slack Integration

Kiro Crew connects to Slack via Socket Mode. You interact with it through DMs or in channels where the bot is present.

Activation Modes

Slack interaction is restricted to the owner — see Access control.

Each channel can have a different activation mode:

Mode	Behavior	Default for
always	Process every message from allowed users	DMs
mention	Only respond when @mentioned; continue in thread replies	Group channels
observe	Passively record messages; respond only when @mentioned (full context)	—
off	Ignore all messages	—
review	Require explicit activation before replying to each message	—

Set per-channel: !channel always / !channel mention / !channel observe / !channel review / !channel off

Owner Commands

Only the owner (set via KIROCREW_OWNER_ID) can use these:

Command	Description
!yolo / !yolo on/off/renew	Show, toggle, or renew auto-approve for all tool calls
!agent <name>	Switch to a different agent globally
!agent off	Switch back to default kirocrew agent
!ta <name>	Set agent for this thread only
!ta off	Remove thread agent override
!ta	Show the current thread agent
!channel	Show current channel activation mode
!channel always/mention/observe/review/off	Set channel activation mode
!channel agent <name/off>	Set per-channel agent override

!allowlist and /kirocrew @user are not accepted while access is owner-only, and slack.allowed_users in config has no effect.

Commands for All Allowed Users

Command	Description
!dashboard	Get a presigned dashboard link (DM'd to you)
!dashboard 2h	Dashboard link with custom duration (max 6h)
!stop	Force-halt the current agent turn in this thread. Bypasses the per-session semaphore and cancels the active task. See "Emergency Stop" below

Keyword Commands

Available to all allowed users (no ! prefix needed):

Command	Description
status	Show runtime stats (uptime, sessions, crons, lessons)
ping	Auto-reply with pong 🦞
cron list	List all scheduled cron jobs
cron remove <id>	Remove a cron job
cron pause <id>	Pause a cron job
cron resume <id>	Resume a paused cron job
spawn run "task"	Spawn a background subagent
spawn list	List running subagents
run <path>	Run an autonomous task from a spec file
run status	Check task runner status
run cancel	Cancel the running task
sessions	List recent dashboard sessions with resume buttons
!compact	Manually trigger context compaction
!incognito <msg>	Send message in incognito mode (reads memory, blocks writes)
!temporary <msg>	Send message in temporary mode (blocks both reads and writes)

Slash Commands

Command	Description
/kirocrew dashboard	Same as !dashboard

Tool Approval Flow

When Kiro Crew needs to run a tool (file write, bash command, etc.):

1. Auto mode (!yolo on): silently approves everything
2. Interactive mode (default): posts Approve / Trust session / Reject buttons
3. 120-second timeout — auto-rejects if no click. Slack has its own figure; the other five channels that prompt at all wait five minutes, and four channels do not prompt. See Channel capabilities.
4. "Trust session" approves all remaining tools for that session

Approval buttons appear in both Slack and the dashboard. Approving in either place resolves both.

Emergency Stop

When Kiro Crew is executing and you need to halt it immediately, type !stop in the thread where the agent is running.

!stop is intercepted before the per-session semaphore in the Slack event handler, so it acts even when the agent is mid-tool-call or mid-stream. The active asyncio task is cancelled, the message queue for that session is cleared, the pending queue is dropped, and the session is reset. You will see "⛔ Execution stopped." in the thread when the stop completes.

Authorization: owner and allowed users. Unauthorized callers get "⛔ Not authorized." and an audit log entry under slack.stop_command.

Streaming

Responses stream in real-time via progressive Slack message edits. A cursor (▍) shows during streaming. Tool calls appear as 🔧 tool name inline.

When the response finishes, the 👀 reaction swaps to 🦞.

File attachments

Slack ingests attachments on incoming messages and can upload local image references from completed replies. Outbound uploads are limited to 10 files, 10 MiB per file, and 25 MiB total per reply.

OPTIONS Buttons

When Kiro Crew presents choices, they render as interactive Block Kit buttons. Click a button to send that choice back to the conversation. You can select multiple options before submitting.

Access control

Kiro Crew on Slack answers the bot owner (KIROCREW_OWNER_ID) and nobody else. Multi-user access is disabled because an allowed user would act under the owner's system identity — the owner's file permissions and cloud credentials — with no scope limit and no expiry. !allowlist, /kirocrew @user and slack.allowed_users are all inert as a result, and stale allowlist entries are pruned at startup.

!dashboard presigned links go to the owner only.

Channel Monitoring

When slack.tracking_channels is configured, Kiro Crew watches for new members joining those channels and prompts the owner to allowlist them.

Channel Activation Modes

Each tracked channel has an activation mode:

Mode	Behavior
always	Respond to every message in the channel
mention	Respond only when @mentioned or in active threads
observe	Record authorized messages; respond only when @mentioned or in active threads, with channel context
review	Generate an owner approval draft instead of posting a public response
off	Disabled

Review mode is useful for channels where you want human approval before the bot posts publicly.

Setting Up Your Slack App

Kiro Crew connects to Slack as a Socket Mode app that you create and install in your own workspace.

1. Create a Slack app at https://api.slack.com/apps and enable Socket Mode. Generate an app-level token (xapp-) with the connections:write scope.
2. Add a bot user with these Bot Token Scopes: app_mentions:read, channels:history, channels:read, chat:write, commands, files:read, files:write, groups:history, groups:read, im:history, im:read, im:write, reactions:write, and users:read.
3. Add User Token Scopes if the same app supplies a user token to a separately configured Slack MCP/search integration: channels:history, channels:read, groups:history, groups:read, im:history, im:read, mpim:history, mpim:read, search:read, and users:read. The gateway does not consume this xoxp-... token.
4. Subscribe to bot events: message.im, message.channels, message.groups, app_mention, app_home_opened, file_change, and member_joined_channel. Install or reinstall the app to grant the scopes and get the bot token (xoxb-).
5. Set credentials in ~/.kiro/crew/.env (SLACK_APP_TOKEN, SLACK_BOT_TOKEN, KIROCREW_OWNER_ID). Slack has no enabled setting: both Slack tokens opt the channel in.
6. Slash command (optional) — the command name is configurable via slack.command in config.json (default: kirocrew). Each app instance should use a unique name.

Settings page

The Slack channel view at /settings/channels/slack shows the connection state, the masked token previews, the owner ID, the slash command and the behaviour toggles. Three things about it are worth knowing before you use it:

• Editing is loopback-only. A request reaching the dashboard through a proxy or from another machine is read-only, so a remote browser sees the state and cannot change it.
• A token is verified against Slack before it is stored. A rejected token is not written. If the host is offline the save succeeds with a warning instead, and clearing a token takes an explicit clear action rather than an empty field.
• Some changes need a restart — the tokens, the owner ID, the slash command and the enterprise-org allowlist are read at boot. Reactions and thinking-indicator toggles apply immediately.

Secrets are written to .env in the config directory with owner-only permissions, never to config.json.

Related docs

• Channel capabilities: the ten-channel matrix — streaming, buttons, uploads, reply length, approval timeout
• Getting Started: install, first run, connecting a channel
• Configuration: the config file and environment variables