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Hermes Agent Slack: Let Your Agent Wire Itself Into Slack From Your Agent OS

By Julian Goldie · 11 November 2026 · agentos.guide

Hermes Agent Slack inside your Agent OS means your agent does its own Slack wiring: it writes the app manifest, checks the config and reports back, while you do only the clicks Slack insists a human makes.

Below is a short quick start, five prompts to paste into your agent, and a daily routine for a small team.

All of it follows the official Hermes Slack guide at release v0.23.1.

If you'd like my team to plan which Slack jobs to hand over first, book a free SEO strategy session.

Quick Start: The Commands Behind The Prompts

Your agent will run these for you, but it helps to recognise them.

hermes slack manifest --agent-view --write
hermes gateway setup
hermes gateway
hermes gateway install

The first writes ~/.hermes/slack-manifest.json, which you paste into Slack under Create New App → From an app manifest.

The second asks for your tokens and allowlist. The last two run the gateway, first in the foreground, then as a service.

Socket Mode does the connecting, so the Agent OS machine needs no public web address.

Three steps stay with you: creating the app on api.slack.com, installing it to the workspace, and generating the xapp- app-level token with connections:write.

Prompt 1: Build And Check The Slack Manifest

Generate my Hermes Slack app manifest with Agent view:
hermes slack manifest --agent-view --write
Then open ~/.hermes/slack-manifest.json and list for me:
1. every slash command it declares,
2. every bot scope, and confirm channels:history, groups:history and files:read are there,
3. every bot event, and confirm message.im, message.mpim, message.channels, message.groups and app_mention are there.
Tell me the exact Slack clicks to create the app from this file.
Do not touch my .env yet.

The scope and event checks matter: the docs name missing channel events as the number one setup issue.

Remember that Agent view is a one-way switch for that Slack app. There's no route back to Assistant view.

Once you've pasted the manifest and installed the app, copy the xoxb- bot token from the Install App page and make the xapp- token under Basic Information → App-Level Tokens.

Then grab each teammate's Member ID from their Slack profile: View full profile, the ⋮ menu, Copy member ID. Usernames won't work in the allowlist.

Prompt 2: Lock Down Who And Where

I'm pasting my Slack tokens and Member IDs below.
Write them to ~/.hermes/.env as SLACK_BOT_TOKEN, SLACK_APP_TOKEN and SLACK_ALLOWED_USERS.
Set the file permissions on ~/.hermes/.env to 600.
In ~/.hermes/config.yaml under slack:, set
  allowed_channels to the two channel IDs I give you,
  ignore_other_user_mentions: true,
  unauthorized_dm_behavior: "ignore".
Under display.platforms.slack set live_status: verb.
Show me the diff, then start the gateway in the foreground and wait for my test DM.

Without SLACK_ALLOWED_USERS the gateway denies every message, so this step is mandatory, not optional.

With allowed_channels set, unlisted channels are silently ignored even if someone tags the bot. Your own 1:1 DMs still work.

The verb setting keeps file paths and commands out of the "working" line in shared rooms.

Once the test DM gets a reply, ask the agent to run hermes gateway install so the bot survives a reboot. On Linux, sudo hermes gateway install --system starts it at boot.

Last, invite the bot into each channel on your list with /invite @Hermes Agent. It never joins on its own.

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→ Join the AI Profit Boardroom

Prompt 3: Give Each Channel Its Own Job

This is where the Agent OS shines for an agency or a shop with several teams.

Add per-channel behaviour to the slack: block of ~/.hermes/config.yaml.
channel_prompts:
  "C01CLIENTA": "You work for Client A, a bakery. Friendly, short, British spelling.
                 Draft only. A human sends anything to the client."
  "C02ORDERS":  "You help the shop team with orders. Summaries in 5 bullets max.
                 Draft only. Never contact customers yourself."
channel_skill_bindings:
  - id: "C02ORDERS"
    skill: <the order-summary skill I name>
Then remind me to run /new in each channel so the binding loads.

Channel prompts are injected on every turn and never written to the transcript, so edits apply straight away.

Skill bindings load once, when a session starts, which is why the docs tell you to run /new after changing one.

If you'd rather a channel shared one running conversation, don't touch the session setting here. By default each person in a shared channel gets their own session, and switching that off means one /reset clears it for everyone.

Channel IDs live at the bottom of each channel's details panel in Slack. Paste them exactly; names won't match.

The "draft only" line is yours to write. Hermes approvals cover risky commands, not what the bot says to a customer.

Prompt 4: Send A Daily Brief To A Home Channel

Set SLACK_HOME_CHANNEL in ~/.hermes/.env to the #daily-brief channel ID I give you.
Check the bot has been invited to that channel. If not, tell me to type /invite @Hermes Agent there.
Create a Hermes cron job for 8am Monday to Friday that summarises yesterday's
orders file and today's calendar in 5 bullets, with deliver: slack.
Create it paused, run it once by hand, and show me the Slack post before resuming it.

A deliver value of slack posts to the home channel. slack:C… picks a channel, and slack:U… sends to that person's DM.

Our Hermes cron job guide covers pausing, missed runs and health checks in depth, and the official cron docs list every delivery option.

Prompt 5: Health-Check The Slack Connection

My Hermes Slack bot answers DMs but not in #ops. Check, in order:
1. message.channels and message.groups in the app's event subscriptions,
2. channels:history and groups:history scopes,
3. whether the app was reinstalled after the last scope or event change,
4. whether the bot is invited to #ops,
5. whether #ops is in allowed_channels.
Read the gateway log for not_authed, invalid_auth or missing_scope errors.
Report what's wrong and the fix. Change nothing without asking me.

That list mirrors the quick checklist in the Slack troubleshooting section.

The fix most people forget: any scope or event change needs a reinstall before Slack applies it.

Two other errors are easy to spot. "Sending messages to this app has been turned off" means the Messages tab is off under App Home. A bot that chats but can't open uploads is missing files:read.

Example: An Agency's First Week

Here's how a four-person agency might roll this out, one prompt a day.

1. Monday: Prompt 1 and Prompt 2. The owner tests in a DM, then invites the bot into one client channel.
2. Tuesday: Prompt 3 gives that channel the client's voice and a draft-only rule. A strategist tags the bot under a brief and gets headline options in the thread.
3. Wednesday: a second client channel joins allowed_channels with its own prompt.
4. Thursday: Prompt 4 starts the paused morning brief. The team reads one manual run before resuming it.
5. Friday: Prompt 5 runs as a check-up, and the owner reviews the week's threads before adding anyone else to the allowlist.

If the agency also works inside a client's own Slack, one gateway can join several workspaces: one bot token per workspace in SLACK_BOT_TOKEN, comma-separated, with a single app-level token.

A Daily Workflow For A Small Team

1. 8am: the brief lands in #daily-brief. The team asks follow-ups in its thread, no tag needed once the bot is active there.
2. Morning: someone mentions the bot in a client channel. It replies in a thread, using that channel's prompt.
3. Midday: the owner sends a voice note by DM. Hermes transcribes it and answers.
4. Afternoon: a teammate stops a long task with !stop in the thread, because Slack blocks slash commands there.
5. Evening: the owner checks the same conversation in the Hermes desktop app. Since v0.23.0, one gateway owns each session, so it's the same history.

What The Agent Can't Do In Slack

• It won't join channels on its own. Every channel needs an /invite.
• In channels it stays quiet until it's @mentioned, unless you list free-response channels.
• Agent view shares the channel you're viewing as a label only. It doesn't read that channel's history.
• Slash command replies are visible only to you, and Slack caps them at five posts.
• The docs don't cover Slack plan requirements or rate limits, so don't promise either.

The newest patch, v0.23.1, adds no Slack-specific notes.

Keeping Tokens Safe

Treat both tokens like passwords.

Keep them in ~/.hermes/.env, rotate them from the Slack app settings now and then, and check who can open your Hermes config folder.

Leave allow_bots on none unless you're running several bots, and then use mentions, which the docs call the safest mode for bot-to-bot work.

For the wider picture, the Hermes security guide covers command approvals, file-write safety and user authorisation.

🔥 Want help choosing your first Slack job?

My team will look at how your business runs and point you to the Slack jobs worth handing to your agent first.

→ Book a free SEO strategy session

Paste Prompt 1 into your agent now, and work down the list from there.

FAQ

Which Slack steps can my agent not do for me?

Creating the app on api.slack.com, installing it to the workspace and generating the xapp- app-level token are clicks you make in Slack yourself.

How do I give each Slack channel its own behaviour?

Use channel_prompts for standing instructions on every turn and channel_skill_bindings to load a skill when a new session starts in that channel.

Where do scheduled posts land in Slack?

A cron job with deliver set to slack posts to SLACK_HOME_CHANNEL; slack plus a channel ID targets that channel, and slack plus a user ID sends a DM.

Is my Slack conversation the same one I see on the desktop?

Yes. Since v0.23.0 one gateway per machine owns every session, so Slack, the CLI and the desktop share one history.

Final word on Hermes Agent Slack

Run the five prompts in order and keep "draft only" on anything customer-facing, then join the AI Profit Boardroom or book a free call with my team to take Hermes Agent Slack further.

Related guides on agentos.guide

→ Hermes Agent Telegram: Run It From Your Agent OS

→ Hermes Agent Discord: Run Your Server Bot In Your Agent OS

→ Grok Bot Microsoft Teams: Plan The Rollout In Your Agent OS

→ Hermes Agent WhatsApp: Five Prompts To Run In Your Agent OS

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