Set up a Slack notification channel (Sentinel) for a colony by driving the browser — reuse or create the "Hive Sentinel" Slack app from a JSON manifest, install it, capture the bot + app tokens, creat
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Set up a Slack notification channel (Sentinel) for a colony by driving the browser — reuse or create the "Hive Sentinel" Slack app from a JSON manifest, install it, capture the bot + app tokens, create/select the channel via the Slack API, and turn Sentinel on so the colony can ping the user on Slack and accept replies. Use when the user asks to "set up Slack notifications", "get pinged on Slack", "connect Slack for alerts", "set up Sentinel on Slack", or clicks the in-app "Set this up with the agent" button on the Slack channel step. Requires hive.browser-automation.
name: hive.slack-notifications-setup
description: Set up a Slack notification channel (Sentinel) for a colony by driving the browser — reuse or create the "Hive Sentinel" Slack app from a JSON manifest, install it, capture the bot + app tokens, create/select the channel via the Slack API, and turn Sentinel on so the colony can ping the user on Slack and accept replies. Use when the user asks to "set up Slack notifications", "get pinged on Slack", "connect Slack for alerts", "set up Sentinel on Slack", or clicks the in-app "Set this up with the agent" button on the Slack channel step. Requires hive.browser-automation.
metadata:
author: hive
type: default-skill
version: "1.1"
requires_skill: hive.browser-automation
Slack Notifications Setup (Sentinel)
Sentinel pings the user on Slack when a colony stalls and lets them reply from
Slack to keep it going. It needs a Slack app with two tokens:
a Bot User OAuth Token (xoxb-…) — stored under credential id slack, used to send alerts and call the Slack API.
an App-Level Token (xapp-…) with connections:write — stored under credential id slack_app, used by Socket Mode to receive the user's reply.
You do the whole thing end to end: reuse-or-create the app, read the tokens, store
them with the sentinel_setup tool (the same API the desktop connector uses),
create/select the channel via the Slack API, and turn Sentinel on — without
making the user paste anything.
Activate hive.browser-automation first — this skill assumes you know the
lifecycle rules (the bridge attaches to the user's own Chrome; never launch or kill
a browser), the screenshot + viewport-fraction coordinate workflow, and
hive-browser interact.
Before you start — check what already exists
Run sentinel_setup({"action": "status"}). If it shows bothslack bot and
slack app already configured, the app and tokens are already in place — skip
Steps 1–4 entirely and go to Step 5 (channel). Don't recreate anything.
Confirm the user is signed into the right Slack workspace: run
hive-browser navigate https://api.slack.com/apps --json in the terminal. If it shows a sign-in screen,
ask them to log into the workspace they want alerts in. If they have several
workspaces, ask which one.
Reuse before create. Scan the apps list for an app named Hive Sentinel.
If it exists, open it and skip to Step 2 (app-level token) / Step 3
(install) — do not create a second app. Only create one if none exists.
Step 1 — Create the app from a JSON manifest
The manifest sets the name, bot scopes (including channel management), Socket Mode,
and event subscriptions in one shot.
Click Create New App → From a manifest, pick the workspace, click Next.
Switch to the JSON tab (not YAML — the browser type tools strip newlines and
break YAML).
Inject the manifest with hive-browser evaluate (run in the terminal) using CodeMirror's API — see
"Filling the manifest editor" below for the exact, non-doubling method. Use
this manifest verbatim:
channels:manage is included up front so you can create the channel by API in
Step 5 without ever reinstalling. Valid manifest keys only: socket_mode_enabled
(not socket_mode), and there is no org_domains field.
With the editor showing a single copy and no "can't translate" error, click
Next, then Create.
Filling the manifest editor (JSON tab — do this, nothing else)
Slack's manifest editor is CodeMirror 5, and it validates from React state, not
the DOM. Two traps, both avoided by the method below:
hive-browser interact/insert_textstrips newlines (breaks the manifest) and the
type path tries to parse the braces. Don't type into it.
A paste/InputEvent that carries the text gets appended on top of the
current value — paste it after setValue and you get the manifest twice.
Set the value once, then fire a value-less input event so React re-reads it.
Run this with hive-browser evaluate in the terminal — because the script is
multi-line and quote-heavy, pass it via --js - (stdin) or --js @file rather than
inline --js '…':
// JSON tab must be active first (click the tab labelled "JSON").
const cm = document.querySelector('.CodeMirror').CodeMirror;
// Embed the manifest as a single-quoted JS string (it contains only double quotes).
const manifest = '{"display_information":{"name":"Hive Sentinel"}, ... }';
cm.setValue(manifest); // setValue REPLACES — it never appends
cm.getInputField().dispatchEvent( // notify React WITHOUT carrying any text
new InputEvent('input', { bubbles: true, inputType: 'insertFromPaste' })
);
return { valueLen: cm.getValue().length }; // sanity-check: one copy, not double
If valueLen is ~2× the manifest length, it doubled — cm.setValue('') then
cm.setValue(manifest) once and re-dispatch. Never solve a "Next is disabled" by
pasting again.
Step 2 — Generate the App-Level Token (xapp-…)
Manifests can't mint app-level tokens. In the app: Basic Information → App-Level
Tokens → Generate Token and Scopes, name it (e.g. socket), add the scope
connections:write, Generate, then read the xapp-… value.
Step 3 — Install to the workspace, get the Bot Token (xoxb-…)
Open OAuth & Permissions and click Install to Workspace → Allow.
Read the Bot User OAuth Token (xoxb-…). Read it from the input's value, not
off a screenshot, so you don't truncate it:
The bot token is validated (auth.test) before storing and reports the workspace.
If it's rejected, re-read the token from the input value (you likely grabbed a
partial string) and retry — never invent or pad a token.
Prefer not to handle the tokens yourself? Fall back to
credentials(action="collect", …) with credential_idslack / slack_app
(field access_token) to pop a secure form. The default flow above is hands-off
and is what the in-app "Set this up with the agent" button expects.
Step 5 — Channel: do it with the Slack API, not the UI
Don't click around the Slack web UI to make or find a channel — use the Slack API
with the bot token via terminal_exec + curl. (A browser fetch() to slack.com
is CORS-blocked from the app tab; curl from the terminal is the reliable path.)
Reuse an existing channel the user named — list and grab its id:
Create a dedicated channel (recommended default, e.g. hive-sentinel). The bot
joins automatically as the creator, and the response carries the new channel id:
test posts to the channel — ask the user to confirm it arrived. If it didn't, the
usual causes are the bot isn't in the channel (re-run conversations.invite) or the
channel id is wrong. sentinel_setup({"action": "status"}) shows stored tokens +
the colony's current config any time.
When test succeeds you're done: tell the user Sentinel is live on #<channel> and
they can reply to its messages from Slack to keep the colony moving. (They can review
or change any of this under Automations → Set up Sentinel.)
Guardrails
Activate hive.browser-automation and obey its lifecycle rules. Never run
google-chrome/chromium, --remote-debugging-port, or kill any browser/bridge
process — you drive the user's existing Chrome.
Reuse, don't duplicate. If a Hive Sentinel app already exists (or
sentinel_setup status shows both tokens configured), use it — never create a
second app.
Never invent, guess, or paraphrase a token. If you can't read one cleanly, re-read
the input value rather than fabricating.
The two store_token providers are exact: slack (bot, xoxb-) and slack_app
(app-level, xapp-). Swapping them breaks send vs. receive.
Manifest editor: JSON tab + cm.setValue once + a value-less input event.
Never type the manifest, never use the YAML tab, never re-paste to "fix" a
disabled Next button (that doubles the content).
If Slack shows an org/admin approval wall on install, the workspace requires admin
approval for apps — tell the user to request it (or use a workspace where they're
admin); you can't bypass it.
How do I install hive.slack-notifications-setup?
Download core/framework/skills/_default_skills/slack-notifications-setup/SKILL.md from the publisher, or copy the path and open the repository. PlugMCP lists the skill and does not host the file.
Where does hive.slack-notifications-setup live?
The publisher keeps it at https://github.com/aden-hive/hive.
Which agents can use hive.slack-notifications-setup?
Claude, Cursor, and Codex can read a SKILL.md you add from the publisher's repository.