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Your AI tool is connected to Slack. Now let’s put it to work — ask it to read a channel and give you a summary you can actually use.

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Get your first summary

Open Claude Desktop and paste this prompt. Replace #channel-name with the name of a real channel in your workspace.
Copy this prompt — replace #channel-name
Please read the recent messages in the Slack channel #channel-name and give me a summary.

Include:
- The main topics discussed
- Any decisions that were made
- Any action items or things people need to do
- Any questions that were asked but not answered

Keep the summary concise — no more than 10 bullet points.
Within a few seconds, Claude will read the channel and return a structured summary.
First time? If Claude asks which workspace or channel you mean, just clarify. For example: “The #general channel in my SheSharp workspace.”
You should see a summary that looks something like this:
Summary of #general (last 7 days):
  • The team discussed the upcoming workshop schedule for April
  • Sarah shared a link to the new resource guide
  • A decision was made to move the Friday meeting to Thursday
  • Action item: Everyone needs to submit their feedback by Wednesday
  • Open question: Who is leading the networking session?
That’s it — you just caught up on an entire channel in seconds.

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Try different summary styles

The first summary is a great start. But depending on your situation, you might want a different format. Try these prompts — they work with both Claude Desktop and Gemini CLI.
Copy this prompt — replace #channel-name
Summarise the recent messages in #channel-name as a quick catch-up
for someone who missed the last few days.

Write it in a casual, friendly tone — like a colleague filling you in
over coffee. Keep it to 5 sentences maximum.
The key skill here is prompt writing. Notice how each prompt tells the AI exactly what format you want, what to include, and what to leave out. The more specific your instructions, the more useful the summary.

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Save your summary

Want to keep a copy of your summary? Here’s how.
  • Copy and paste: Select the summary text and paste it into a document, email, or notes app
  • Download: Click the copy icon at the top of Claude’s response to copy the entire message

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Ask follow-up questions

The AI remembers the messages it just read. You can ask follow-up questions without fetching the messages again. Try any of these:
Search for a topic
Were there any messages about [topic]?
Find shared links
Were there any links shared? List them all with a brief description of each.
Check who's active
Who was the most active person in the conversation?
Filter by time
Summarise only messages from the last 24 hours.
Analyse sentiment
What was the overall mood or tone of the conversation?
This is where AI really shines. Instead of scrolling through hundreds of messages looking for one piece of information, you can just ask. “Did anyone mention the budget?” is much faster than reading every message yourself.

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What just happened?

Let’s recap what you did:
  1. Connected an AI tool to your Slack workspace
  2. Fetched messages from a channel — the AI handled this automatically
  3. Summarised the conversation in a structured, useful format
  4. Customised the summary style to match your needs
  5. Asked follow-up questions to find specific information
The key insight: AI is excellent at reading large amounts of text and extracting what matters. A task that would take you 20 minutes of scrolling took the AI about 10 seconds.

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Troubleshooting

Go to Customize → Connectors and check that Slack shows as connected. If it shows an error, remove the connector and add it again. Make sure you authorise the correct workspace.
Check your ~/.gemini/settings.json file for typos. Common issues: missing commas, curly quotes instead of straight quotes, or wrong bot token. After fixing, exit Gemini CLI (/quit) and restart it.
The channel might not have enough messages. Try a busier channel with more activity. You can also be more specific in your prompt — for example, “Summarise only messages from the last 3 days” or “Focus on messages about the upcoming event.”
Add filtering instructions to your prompt. For example: “Ignore messages from bots”, “Only include messages related to [project name]”, or “Skip casual greetings and small talk.”
By default, the AI may only fetch the most recent messages. Ask it to go further back: “Summarise all messages from #channel-name in the last 7 days” or “Read the last 100 messages from #channel-name and summarise them.”
Nice work — you’ve built a real productivity workflow. Head to Keep going for ideas on what to try next.