slack-bot-builder

What it does

Instructs how to build Slack apps using the Bolt framework across Python, JavaScript (Node.js), and Java. It emphasizes Block Kit for rich UIs, interactive components, slash commands, event handling, OAuth installation flows, and Workflow Builder integration, with a focus on production-ready best practices.

How it works

The skill outlines the Bolt App Foundation pattern, noting that Bolt handles authentication, event routing, request verification, and HTTP processing. It provides concrete code examples for Python showcasing:

• Initializing App with tokens from environment variables
• Handling messages containing a trigger (e.g., "hello")
• Implementing a slash command ("/ticket") that opens a modal with fields for Title, Description, and Priority, then creates a ticket and notifies the user
• Handling modal submissions to extract values and call a create_ticket function, followed by posting a confirmation message
• Handling button clicks to acknowledge and update messages to remove interactive elements
• Listening for app_home_opened events to publish a home view with a welcome section and a Create Ticket button
• Using Socket Mode for development and comments on production using a web server setup

It also includes anti-patterns such as not acknowledging within 3 seconds, blocking operations in the ack handler, hardcoding tokens, and not using Socket Mode for development.

Block Kit usage is described with limits:

• Up to 50 blocks per message
• Up to 100 blocks in modals/Home tabs
• Block text limited to 3000 characters

An example function build_notification_blocks demonstrates constructing Block Kit blocks for incident notifications, including headers, details, description, action buttons, and a context footer, with conditional severity emojis.

OAuth Installation Pattern section explains enabling OAuth 2.0 installation, configuring scopes, persistent storage, and the possibility of user token scopes if needed. It presents a DatabaseInstallationStore class with save and find_installation methods and shows initializing an App with OAuthSettings, including a list of scopes.

When to use it

Use when starting any new Slack app, migrating from legacy Slack APIs, or building production Slack integrations, particularly when aiming to leverage Bolt for multi-language support and production-ready patterns.

What it can touch

• The skill references environment variables for tokens and secrets (e.g., SLACK_BOT_TOKEN, SLACK_SIGNING_SECRET) and demonstrates usage of Slack Bolt APIs, SocketModeHandler, and Slack Block Kit structures. It indicates integration points for creating tickets in an external system and posting messages back to users. It uses functions like create_ticket and Slack client methods such as views_open, chat_postMessage, chat_update, views_publish, and client methods within event handlers.

Caveats

• Risk: critical
• License: MIT
• It documents anti-patterns and best practices, including not acknowledging requests within 3 seconds, avoiding hardcoded tokens, and using Socket Mode for development. It also notes potential production considerations like using database-backed stores for OAuth installation data and storing tokens securely.