Messaging

The messaging provider sends and updates messages in chat platforms. This is used by the interactive agent to post responses in threads — it’s different from the notification provider, which sends one-shot webhook payloads.

The key difference: messaging supports two-way threads (send a message, then update it in-place), while notification is fire-and-forget.

import { slack } from "@swenyai/providers/messaging";

Interface

interface MessagingProvider {
  sendMessage(msg: ChatMessage): Promise<{ messageId: string }>;
  updateMessage(channelId: string, messageId: string, text: string): Promise<void>;
}

interface ChatMessage {
  channelId: string;
  threadId?: string;
  text: string;
  format?: "markdown" | "text";
}

Slack

const messenger = slack({
  token: process.env.SLACK_BOT_TOKEN!,
  logger: myLogger,
});

Requires @slack/web-api as a peer dependency (lazy-loaded at runtime).

Sending a message

const { messageId } = await messenger.sendMessage({
  channelId: "C0123ABCDEF",
  text: "Looking into this...",
});

Updating in-place

The agent uses this pattern to replace a “thinking…” message with the actual response:

// Send placeholder
const { messageId } = await messenger.sendMessage({
  channelId: "C0123ABCDEF",
  threadId: "1234567890.123456",
  text: "Looking into this...",
});

// Replace with actual response
await messenger.updateMessage(
  "C0123ABCDEF",
  messageId,
  "Here's what I found: ...",
);

Required bot token scopes

Scope	Purpose
chat:write	Send messages
im:history	Read DM history for context
im:read	Access DM channels
im:write	Open DM channels
app_mentions:read	Respond to @mentions