Slack — Team AI Assistant

Remember that feeling when you finally get the office group chat to work exactly how you want it? Connecting Hermes Agent to Slack is a bit like that — except instead of just chatting with coworkers, you’re adding a tireless assistant who never sleeps, never takes a coffee break, and never misses a mention.

Why Socket Mode Changes Everything

The old way of connecting bots to Slack required a public internet address — like putting your assistant in a glass room with the door wide open. Hermes uses Socket Mode, which works over a secure WebSocket connection. That means your AI assistant can live safely behind your firewall, on your laptop, or on a private server, without exposing any public endpoints.

The only tokens you need:

• Bot Token (xoxb-) — lets the bot send messages
• App-Level Token (xapp-) — authenticates the WebSocket connection

The Fastest Setup: Let Hermes Write the Manifest

You don’t need to manually configure dozens of permissions. Hermes can generate a complete Slack app manifest for you — it declares every slash command (/btw, /stop, /model), every required OAuth scope, and every event subscription. One command does it all:

hermes slack manifest --agent-view --write

This writes a JSON file to ~/.hermes/slack-manifest.json and prints instructions for pasting it into Slack. If you have a long description for your bot, you can pull it from a file:

hermes slack manifest --agent-view --long-description-file AGENTS.md --write

Then go to api.slack.com/apps, click Create New App → From an app manifest, paste the JSON, and you’re 90% done.

Manual Setup (If You Prefer the Scenic Route)

If you want to build the app by hand, start with Create New App → From scratch, name it “Hermes Agent,” and pick your workspace. Then head to Features → OAuth & Permissions and add these bot token scopes:

Scope	Purpose
chat:write	Send messages as the bot
app_mentions:read	Detect when @mentioned
channels:history	Read message history

A Quick Heads-Up About Classic Apps

If you’re using an old Slack app built on the RTM API, it stopped working in March 2025. Don’t try to patch it — create a new app using the steps above. Hermes uses the modern Bolt SDK with Socket Mode, which is the only supported path forward.

Final Thoughts and One Practical Tip

Connecting Hermes to Slack takes about ten minutes, and the payoff is huge: your team gets an AI assistant right where they already collaborate. No new tabs, no new tools, just a helpful teammate in the channel.

Practical tip: Start with a private channel for testing. Invite your bot, try a few slash commands, and confirm it responds correctly before adding it to busy team channels. You’ll avoid embarrassing moments and give yourself room to fine-tune the experience.