SlackBot WS

Reconnects. Backoff. Heartbeats. Rate limits. Traffic shaping.

The only thing left is the fun stuff.

A production-ready Slack bot framework for Elixir, built for Socket Mode.

Quick Start elixir

defmodule MyApp.SlackBot do
  use SlackBot, otp_app: :my_app

  handle_event "message", event, _ctx do
    SlackBot.push({"chat.postMessage", %{
      "channel" => event["channel"],
      "text" => "Hello!"
    }})
  end
end

A grammar-driven DSL that turns Slack interactions into clean, testable Elixir code.

See more in action

Why Socket Mode?

Real-time event delivery without the operational overhead of webhooks.

No Public Endpoints

Works behind firewalls without exposing HTTP endpoints

Low Latency

Persistent connections for real-time event delivery

Local Development

No ngrok or tunnel required during development

Interactive Payloads

Full support for modals, shortcuts, and actions

Everything You Need for Production Bots

SlackBot WS handles the operational complexity so you can focus on building features.

Resilience & Reliability

Built to stay online

Resilient Connection

Supervised transport with automatic backoff, jittered retries, deduplication, and heartbeats. Your bot stays online.

Tier-Aware Rate Limiting

Per-channel and per-workspace shaping with Slack's published tier quotas enforced automatically.

Production Defaults

Add tokens, supervise the module, and you have heartbeats, backoff, and rate limiting without config.

Developer Experience

SlackBot WS's developer ergonomics makes it a joy to build features.

Declarative Slash Grammar

Compile-time DSL for deterministic command parsing. No regex piles—just structured maps.

Plug-like Middleware

Compose pipelines with handle_event, slash, and middleware macros instead of sprawling case statements.

Native Interactivity

Shortcuts, message actions, block suggestions, and modal submissions all flow through the same pipeline.

AI-Pair Ready

Ships with AGENTS.md so your dev agents understand SlackBot WS's features and idioms.

Scalability & Observability

Ready for production

Task-Based Fan-out

Handlers run in supervised tasks so slow commands never block the socket loop.

Pluggable Adapters

ETS cache by default, swap to Redis for multi-node. Configure cache sync and assigns like :bot_user_id.

Full Observability

Telemetry spans, diagnostics ring buffer with replay, and LiveDashboard-ready metrics out of the box.

Powerful & Expressive

See how simple it is to build production-ready Slack bots with SlackBot WS.

Slash Commands Middleware Event Handlers Quick Start

Declarative Slash Commands elixir

defmodule MyApp.SlackBot do
  use SlackBot, otp_app: :my_app

  # /deploy api        → %{service: "api"}
  # /deploy api canary → %{service: "api", canary?: true}
  slash "/deploy" do
    value :service
    optional literal("canary", as: :canary?)
    repeat do
      literal "env"
      value :envs
    end

    handle payload, ctx do
      %{service: svc, envs: envs} = payload["parsed"]
      Deployments.kick(svc, envs, ctx)
    end
  end
end

Input → Output:


                      /deploy api

→


                      %{service: "api"}


                      /deploy api canary env staging

→


                      %{service: "api", canary?: true, envs: ["staging"]}