read a stretch of slack channel history with ai

come back from holiday knowing what the team announced. name a slack channel or direct conversation and the dates you missed.

by the dusk bot team · checked 12 november 2026 · how we made this

a bot reads the main timeline your account can access and brings back a recap. thread replies need their own read, so ask it to flag those. read only access keeps the catch-up from changing slack.

pixel art: a coral pixel bot, a green pixel bot and a pink pixel bot beside the Slack mark on a white tile, a newspaper and an alarm clock and a calendar, on a sandy path in front of snowy hills and green fields, one saying "timeline before the reply"

fetch conversation history, in plain words

get the week's announcements without scrolling the whole channel. give the bot a conversation and a date window. it finds the place and narrows the timeline by time.

a parent message shows whether replies exist. a separate thread read gets those replies, including decisions made after the announcement. ask for a timeline recap first and open the flagged threads next.

a routine to copy

paste this into a chat with your bot

each saturday at 10:45, read the past week's main timeline in harborflint-dispatch on slack. list announced collection times and changed pickup locations here, with posting times. flag messages that have thread replies. don't treat the parent message as final until you read those replies separately. never post, react or edit anything in slack.

when: saturdays at 10:45
needs: slack connected as read only for channel lookup and conversation history

what comes back looks like this (an example)

harborflint dispatch timeline
- beatriz announced a friday pickup at the north gate.
- hugh posted a revised collection window. its replies remain unread.
open that thread before treating the window as final.

good jobs for it

catch the announcements you missed on holiday. keep the summary within those dates.
rebuild an outage timeline. pick which threads need a closer read next.
prepare a handover. read the recent timeline of a direct conversation you can access.

before it runs

dusk bot counts Fetch conversation history as a read: it looks and changes nothing. a bot you allow only to read can use it.

the permissions Slack asks for to run it: channels:history, groups:history, im:history, mpim:history.

how to start

connect slack as read only for this bot.
name the channel or conversation. confirm the account can open it.
give the time window. decide whether to allow a separate thread read too.
try a dated extract. schedule it when the coverage looks right; find later runs in automations.

limits worth knowing

history leaves thread replies out. the bot reads those separately.
busy channels need several batches. keep reading until the whole week is covered.
keep going while slack says more history remains. it can return fewer messages than requested before reaching the end.

the details it works from

input	required	what it is
`channel`	yes	The ID of the public channel, private channel, direct message, or multi-person direct message to fetch history from.
`limit`	no	Maximum number of messages to request in this single Slack API call (1-1000).
`cursor`	no	Pagination cursor from `response_metadata.next_cursor` of a previous response.
`latest`	no	End of the time range of messages to include in results.
`oldest`	no	Start of the time range of messages to include in results.
`inclusive`	no	When true, includes messages at the exact 'oldest' or 'latest' boundary timestamps in results.

from composio's catalog for Slack (action SLACK_FETCH_CONVERSATION_HISTORY, read 12 november 2026⁴). your bot fills these in from what you tell it.

try it in 2 minutes

connect slack as read only
name one channel and yesterday's date window
ask for the main announcements and unread threads
open one flagged thread before acting on its parent message

mistakes people make

treating the first announcement as the final decision

read its replies. the plan might have changed there.

stopping when a batch looks short

ask whether slack has more history to return.

before you act on the recap

the channel and dates match
the bot covered the whole time window
unread threads have visible flags
you read the replies behind any final decision

questions

why did the summary miss a reply inside a thread?

history returns the main timeline only. the bot needs the separate conversation-replies action for the thread under a message.

can it read private channels and direct messages?

yes, where the connected account has access. those conversation types work. it cannot open conversations outside that account's reach.

sources

dusk bot docs: files and apps
dusk bot docs: routines
dusk bot docs: computer permissions
composio, Slack toolkit (catalog version 20261101_00), checked 12 november 2026

drafted with ai help from the dusk bot docs and the sources listed on this page, then checked against them. if something here is wrong or out of date, write to [email protected].