Trigger agents from Slack

Once the Slack integration is wired up, your teammates can talk to auxilia agents directly from Slack — no web app, no extra logins. This tutorial walks through what the end-user experience looks like and how to make it land well with your team.

Before you start: the Slack app must be installed and connected. If it isn’t yet, see Slack Integration — Setup (a one-time task for a workspace admin).

How your team uses it

Starting a conversation

There are two ways to invoke an agent:

1. Mention the bot in a channel — type @auxilia in any channel the bot is in. The bot replies with a picker listing the agents you have access to.
2. Start an assistant thread — Slack shows an “Assistants” entry in the sidebar; opening one gives you a private thread with the bot.

Pick an agent from the picker to start a conversation. Every Slack thread maps to a dedicated auxilia thread — so the agent remembers the context as the conversation continues.

Having the conversation

Once the agent is picked, chatting feels like talking to a teammate. Messages stream in as the agent thinks, and any tool it calls (looking up a HubSpot contact, querying BigQuery, searching Linear) is shown inline so you can see what’s happening.

Because the Slack thread is persistent, you can come back a day later, ask a follow-up, and the agent will pick up exactly where you left off.

Approving sensitive actions

If the agent wants to run a tool that you’ve configured as needs approval — say, updating a HubSpot deal or creating a GitHub pull request — it won’t just do it. Slack posts a message with Approve and Reject buttons:

• Approve → the agent runs the tool and continues
• Reject → the agent is told no, and decides what to do next (often, explaining it needs a different approach)

This is the same approval flow as in the web UI, just surfaced where the team already lives.

Who can use it

Every Slack user needs an auxilia account with the same email address as their Slack profile. When someone sends a message, auxilia looks up their Slack email and matches it to the workspace user directory. If there’s no match, the bot replies with a gentle message telling them to sign up in auxilia first.

The agent list the user sees is filtered by their agent permissions — so members only see agents that have been shared with them.

Good ways to set this up for a team

A few patterns that work well:

• One general-purpose agent invited to a team channel — #sales-help has an always-on CRM agent; anyone in the channel can ask questions by mentioning it
• A curated picker — admins share a small set of agents with everyone, so the picker only shows the three or four assistants the team actually needs
• Private assistant threads for sensitive work — people use the assistant sidebar for agents that touch private data (their own leads, a specific account)

Reusing an agent across multiple threads

Each Slack thread has its own memory. To start fresh with the same agent, just open a new thread and pick it again — the two conversations won’t share context.

Troubleshooting

“I mentioned the bot but nothing happened” — the bot needs to be invited to the channel (type /invite @auxilia or add it from the channel settings).

“The bot said it doesn’t recognize me” — your Slack email doesn’t match an account in auxilia. Sign up in the web app with the same email you use in Slack, then try again.

“I don’t see the agent I want in the picker” — an admin hasn’t shared it with you yet. Ask them to grant you access on the agent’s permissions page.