Slack Integration

The RunWhen Slack integration brings AI-powered infrastructure investigation directly into your team’s Slack workspace. Instead of switching to the RunWhen UI, engineers can ask questions, investigate issues, and trigger diagnostics from the same channels and DMs where they already collaborate.

The Slack app connects to Workspace Chat — the same AI Assistants and tasks available in the RunWhen Platform are available through Slack conversations.

What You Can Do

Direct messages — DM the RunWhen app to start a private investigation. Ask questions like “what’s unhealthy in the production namespace?” and the AI Assistant searches your workspace for relevant issues, runs diagnostics, and returns findings.

Channel mentions — @mention the RunWhen app in any channel to bring the AI Assistant into a team conversation. The Assistant responds in a thread, keeping the channel clean while providing detailed investigation results.

Thread-based context — Follow-up questions in the same thread continue the conversation. The Assistant uses the thread history to maintain context across multiple messages.

In-Slack configuration — Use /runwhen settings within Slack to select which RunWhen workspace and AI Assistant the app uses, set defaults for your team or yourself, and connect channels. See the Setup Guide for details.

Rich responses — The Assistant returns structured findings including issue summaries, affected resources, and remediation steps. When a response includes content that requires richer rendering (task widgets, diagrams), the Assistant provides a link to continue in Workspace Chat.

Prerequisites

Before setting up the Slack integration, ensure you have:

• A RunWhen workspace with tasks and SLXs configured
• Slack workspace admin access (required to approve the RunWhen app installation)
• At least one AI Assistant configured in your RunWhen workspace

How It Works

The integration links a Slack workspace to one or more RunWhen workspaces. When a user sends a message — either as a DM or an @mention in a channel — the RunWhen app identifies the linked workspace, resolves the user’s identity via their Slack email, and routes the question to the appropriate AI Assistant.

Each Slack user is mapped to their RunWhen account by email address. The same workspace permissions that apply in the RunWhen UI apply to Slack interactions — users can only access workspaces they have permission to use.

Workspace and channel mapping

• Global default — Set a default RunWhen workspace that applies to all users in the Slack workspace
• Per-user default — Individual users can override the global default with their own preferred workspace
• Per-channel mapping — Specific channels can be mapped to specific RunWhen workspaces. To connect a channel, run /runwhen settings from within that channel — the command must be executed directly in the channel you want to link.

Assistant selection

You can select which AI Assistant handles Slack conversations. The recommended assistant for Slack is Super Slacker, which is optimized for the Slack message format. Other assistants (Dev Danica, Eager Edgar, etc.) also work but may produce responses better suited to the web UI.

Current Limitations

The Slack integration is under active development. The following limitations apply to the current release:

Limitation	Details
Thread ownership	The user who starts a chat thread is considered the owner. All messages in that thread are attributed to the owner from the AI Assistant’s perspective, even if other users reply.
Rich content handoff	When a response includes task widgets, Mermaid diagrams, or other rich content, users receive a link to Workspace Chat. Only the thread owner can continue that session — other users are directed to the Workspace Chat landing page.
Thread context window	The Assistant uses up to the last 10 messages in a thread for context. It does not pull messages from outside the thread.
Multi-user visibility	In multi-user chat threads, messages from non-owner users may not be visible in the Workspace Chat session view.

Next Steps

• Setup Guide — Install the RunWhen app in your Slack workspace and connect it to a RunWhen workspace
• Workspace Chat — Learn about the AI Assistant capabilities available through Slack
• AI Assistants — Understand the different assistant profiles and when to use each one