Slack

Slack is the channel most teams add second (after web), and it changes how a Jootle instance feels when more than one person is using it.

This chapter is what to expect once Slack is connected. The setup walkthrough lives at Connect Google Workspace (Google) or the equivalent flow for Slack (forthcoming as a dedicated chapter).

What Slack-connected Jootle looks like

You install a Jootle app to your Slack workspace once. The app shows up as a bot user that your team can:

DM for private one-on-one chat.
@-mention in channels for in-thread help.
Invite to channels so the bot can participate.

The Slack bot is the same assistant as your web and Telegram. Same memory, same projects, same artifacts. Slack is just a different window onto it.

Direct messages

A DM to the Jootle bot is a private conversation with your AI, just like web chat but in Slack.

The catch with team instances: each team member’s DM is their own scope. You can’t read your colleague’s DMs with the bot (by design, for privacy), but everyone is talking to the same brain.

What goes in via your DM goes into the knowledge graph as your view. What goes in via your colleague’s DM is their view. They cross over when shared entities (projects, contacts) are referenced.

Mentions in channels

When you @-mention the bot in a Slack channel, the bot sees the message and can reply.

@Jarvis can you summarize this thread and post the summary?

@Jarvis turn this into a task on the redesign project.

@Jarvis when is our next deploy?

Mentions in channels are public to the channel. Replies come in the same thread by default; ask for a DM if you want it private.

Channel mentions are useful for:

Surfacing context. Someone says “we discussed this last week”, and Jarvis confirms or links to the decision artifact.
Turning chat into work. “Make this a task” or “log this decision” while the conversation is live.
Reminders for the room. “Remind everyone about Friday’s deadline” produces a scheduled ping back in the channel.

Inviting the bot to a channel

You can invite the bot to a channel just like any other user. This is useful when:

A channel maps to a specific project (“#redesign”), and you want the bot to maintain context for that project from in-channel chat.
You want recurring reports posted to a channel (“post the daily standup summary to #team”).
You want passive monitoring (the bot listens without responding unless mentioned).

Once invited, the bot reads the channel. By default it doesn’t respond unless mentioned, but you can set rules: “Post a thread summary every Friday at 5pm to this channel.”

The bot has whatever Slack permissions you give it. We default to read-and-write in invited channels, but you can configure read-only if you’d rather the bot listen but not post.

Routing messages to projects

The same routing rules apply on Slack as elsewhere (Projects, programs, and tasks). If you’re in a channel named after a project (“#redesign”), the bot routes messages to that project by default. In other channels, you can be explicit: “log this under the redesign project.”

In DMs, you specify the project (or accept the bot’s guess) the same way you would on web.

Patterns that work on Slack

A few patterns customers come back to:

Standup notes. “Drop a standup template in this channel every weekday at 9am, with each person’s open tasks.”
Decision logs. “Whenever someone says ‘we decided’, log a decision under the project.”
Quick lookups. “@Jarvis what was Anna’s quote?”
Roll-ups. “Post a Friday roll-up of this channel’s most important threads.”

Less common but powerful:

Automated handoffs. When a follow-up condition fires (a client replies, a deploy fails), post to a specific Slack channel.

What Slack does NOT do

To set clear expectations:

Doesn’t read every message in every channel by default. Even in channels the bot is invited to, it reads on demand. We don’t index your whole workspace.
Doesn’t surface DMs to others. A team member’s private DMs with the bot stay private to that team member.
Doesn’t post on someone’s behalf in their voice without consent. If you ask the bot to “post this as me”, that’s an approval gate that fires to you.

Multiple workspaces

You can connect more than one Slack workspace if you work across them. Each gets its own bot installation, and the connection is independent. Your knowledge graph is shared; the bots in each workspace can both reference what the others have learned.

Disconnecting

Disconnect Slack from Integrations in the web app. The bot loses access to channels and DMs immediately. Your data in Jootle is not deleted; you can reconnect later.

If you’d rather pause without disconnecting (a vacation week, for example), you can mute the bot’s outbound on a schedule: “Don’t post to Slack between Friday 5pm and Monday 9am.”