Slack workspace channel catalog

Purpose: Single place to discover Brainforge Slack channels: IDs (for bots, MCP, automation), stated purpose/topic, whether a channel is internal vs external-facing, membership signal, and recency (last message time). Teammates and agents use this to pick the right channel without hunting in the Slack UI.

Living data: The wide table is machine-generated — edit slack-workspace-channel-catalog.generated.md only by re-running the script, not by hand.

How to regenerate

1. Use a Slack token with conversations.list, conversations.history, and conversations.members. users.list is only needed when SLACK_MEMBER_SAMPLE is greater than 0 (default 6) so sample names can exclude bots. Use the same SLACK_BOT_TOKEN as platform Slack integrations when possible; the bot must be in private channels you want listed.
2. From the monorepo root:

node --env-file=apps/platform/.env.local knowledge/engineering/scripts/slack-channel-catalog.mjs

Or:

SLACK_BOT_TOKEN=xoxb-… npm run slack:channel-catalog

3. Commit the updated slack-workspace-channel-catalog.generated.md on a branch when the catalog should advance (monthly, or after major channel churn).

Optional env:

Variable	Meaning
SLACK_CHANNEL_CATALOG_OUT	Override output path (default: knowledge/engineering/slack-workspace-channel-catalog.generated.md).
SLACK_MEMBER_SAMPLE	Max sample member display names per channel (0 = skip; default 6). Full roster is not exported—use Slack for membership management.

What each column means

Column	Source / notes
Channel	Name with # prefix.
Channel ID	Stable ID (C…) for APIs, MCP slack_send_message, Railway envs, etc.
Purpose / topic	From Slack purpose and topic (truncated). May be empty if unset.
Audience	External (Slack Connect) when is_ext_shared. Otherwise a heuristic (Internal vs Mixed / external-facing) from channel name + purpose/topic keywords—not authoritative. Fix ambiguous channels here in prose or ask Ops to rename/clarify purpose in Slack.
Visibility	Public vs private channel.
Archived	Whether the channel is archived.
Slack Connect	Same as external shared indicator.
Members	num_members when the API returns it.
Sample members	Alphabetically sorted sample of display names (optional; see SLACK_MEMBER_SAMPLE). Bots are excluded using users.list is_bot when member sampling is enabled.
Created	Channel creation time (UTC).
Latest message	Timestamp of the latest message visible to the token (UTC), not “last read.” Empty channels show —.

Limits and privacy

• Not all channels: Only channels the token can see appear (e.g. private channels the bot was never invited to are missing).
• Not a substitute for Slack: Membership changes, invites, and compliance live in Slack and IT policy.
• Internal use: Treat the generated file as internal; it may contain channel names tied to clients or partners.

Related

• Slack MCP fallback and discovery: knowledge/standards/04-prompts/slack-mcp-context.md
• Platform env vars for Slack: apps/platform/.env.example (SLACK_BOT_TOKEN, etc.)