slack-cached

A small Python CLI that caches Slack threads, users, and channels to a local SQLite database.

Given a Slack thread URL (or an explicit channel id and root timestamp), it fetches the thread via conversations.replies and stores every message in a SQLite cache. On subsequent runs it only fetches new replies (and detects edits) by passing oldest to the API based on the highest cached ts.

It can also cache every workspace user and visible channel, so that threads can be rendered with human-readable author names.

Install

uv sync

Run it:

uv run slack-cached --help

Authentication

Credentials are loaded in this order:

1. Environment variables: SLACK_TOKEN (and optional SLACK_COOKIE for xoxc/web-client tokens).
2. A config file at $XDG_CONFIG_HOME/slack-cached/config (defaults to ~/.config/slack-cached/config). It uses a simple KEY=VALUE format:

   SLACK_TOKEN=xoxb-...
   SLACK_COOKIE=...
   

Cache location

The default cache database lives at $XDG_CACHE_HOME/slack-cached/threads.db (or ~/.cache/slack-cached/threads.db). Override with --db /path/to/file.db.

Usage

All commands accept -v/--verbose for debug logging on stderr and --db to override the cache location.

Threads

Cache or refresh a thread (no thread output, only a summary on stderr):

slack-cached fetch https://acme.slack.com/archives/C0123ABCDEF/p1700000000123456

Or with explicit channel/ts:

slack-cached fetch --channel C0123ABCDEF --ts 1700000000.123456

Show a cached thread (human-readable by default; use --json for JSON). It auto-fetches if the thread is missing; pass --no-fetch to disable that:

slack-cached show https://acme.slack.com/archives/C0123ABCDEF/p1700000000123456
slack-cached show --json https://acme.slack.com/archives/C0123ABCDEF/p1700000000123456

Users and channels

Cache or refresh every workspace user or visible channel:

slack-cached fetch-users
slack-cached fetch-channels

Show cached users or channels (human-readable by default, --json for JSON; both auto-fetch when empty unless --no-fetch is given):

slack-cached show-users
slack-cached show-channels --json

When a thread's authors are present in the cached users, show renders their display names instead of raw user ids.

Refresh behavior

fetch always reaches out to Slack. If the thread is already cached, it requests conversations.replies with oldest=<latest_cached_ts> so the API returns only new replies (and any recent edits at that boundary). Messages are upserted by ts, so edits replace the older version in place.

Development

uv sync
uv run pytest
uv run ruff check
uv run ruff format --check

Related projects

• slacrawl