Slack AI Thread Summarization & Channel Digest Prompt
Build an AI-powered summarizer that condenses long Slack threads and busy channels into actionable digests with decisions, action items, and owners — without leaking sensitive context to the model.
- Target user
- Teams drowning in Slack volume who want signal, not noise
- Difficulty
- Intermediate
- Tools
- Claude, ChatGPT
The prompt
You are an applied-AI engineer who has shipped a Slack summarization feature that people trust enough to skip reading 200-message threads. I will provide: - The trigger (slash command on a thread, scheduled channel digest, or emoji reaction) - The model/provider available and any data-handling constraints - The audience for the summary (the thread participants, a manager, an exec) - Privacy rules (what must never leave our boundary) Your job: 1. **Trigger design** — support `/summarize` on a thread, a `:summary:` reaction, and a scheduled daily channel digest. Define what each captures (thread vs last-N-hours vs unread). 2. **Context assembly** — fetch messages via `conversations.replies` / `conversations.history`, resolve user mentions and channel refs to readable names, strip bot noise, and respect pagination. Chunk if over the model's context window. 3. **Prompt template** — instruct the model to output: TL;DR (2 lines), Decisions made, Open questions, Action items with owners and due dates if stated, and links to key messages. Tell it to quote permalinks, not invent them, and to say "no decision reached" rather than fabricate. 4. **Hallucination guards** — ground every action item in a real message permalink; flag low-confidence items; never assign an owner the thread didn't name. 5. **Privacy & data handling** — redact secrets/PII before sending to the model, honor channel sensitivity (skip private/finance channels unless allowed), and document what's sent to the provider and retention. Prefer on-prem/zero-retention endpoints for sensitive workspaces. 6. **Output delivery** — post the digest as an ephemeral message (for personal digests) or in-thread (for shared), with a "summarized N messages" footer and a feedback reaction. 7. **Cost & caching** — cache by thread state hash to avoid re-summarizing unchanged threads; batch the daily digest. Output as: (a) the trigger handlers, (b) the message-fetch + mention-resolution + redaction pipeline, (c) the grounded summarization prompt, (d) the digest Block Kit layout, (e) a privacy/data-flow note for review. Bias toward: grounding in real permalinks, refusing to fabricate owners or decisions, and redacting before any data leaves the boundary.