Advanced / Specialized

Slack's web app is just a big web app — chrome-use drives it like any other page: connect to an already-logged-in session, read an accessibility snapshot to get elements with @ref, then check unreads, jump to channels, search conversations, and extract messages. Everything runs through a real browser, never touching the Slack API, and needing no OAuth, webhooks, or bot tokens.

Quick start

chrome-use drives your already-logged-in real Chrome through the extension, so Slack's login is reused and you never open a debug port (Chrome 136+ pops "Allow remote debugging?" on every connect to one — see How It Works). Just have it open the Slack web app.

# Drive your logged-in real Chrome via the extension; open the Slack web app (login reused)
$ chrome-use open https://app.slack.com

# Grab an interactive snapshot to see what's on the page
$ chrome-use snapshot -i

Check unread messages

Unreads are scattered across a few places: the "More unreads" button at the top of the sidebar, the unread roundup in the Activity tab, and channel names shown in bold / with a badge. Snapshot first to locate refs, then check them one by one.

# Continuing on the Slack tab opened above
$ chrome-use snapshot -i

# Open the Activity tab to see the unread roundup (ref may differ each time)
$ chrome-use click @e14
$ chrome-use wait 1000
$ chrome-use screenshot activity-unreads.png

# Or expand the sidebar's "More unreads"
$ chrome-use click @e21
$ chrome-use wait 500
$ chrome-use screenshot expanded-unreads.png

To count how many unread channels there are, expand the unread group and count the treeitems:

# After expanding unreads, each treeitem with a channel name counts as one unread
$ chrome-use snapshot -i | grep -c "treeitem"

Navigate to a channel

After snapshotting, find the channel name in the sidebar list (e.g. engineering, product-design) and click its treeitem ref. Once inside the channel, use wait --load networkidle to let the content finish loading before acting.

$ chrome-use snapshot -i

# Click the channel's treeitem (example ref — go by your own snapshot)
$ chrome-use click @e94
$ chrome-use wait --load networkidle

# Scroll down in the message area to load more history
$ chrome-use scroll down 500
$ chrome-use screenshot channel-messages.png

Search conversations

Using Slack's built-in search is the easiest path: click the search button, type the keyword, hit Enter, and wait for results to load.

$ chrome-use snapshot -i
$ chrome-use click @e5          # search button
$ chrome-use fill @e_search "keyword"
$ chrome-use press Enter
$ chrome-use wait --load networkidle
$ chrome-use screenshot search-results.png

Extract data

For programmatic parsing, use a JSON snapshot to get a machine-readable accessibility tree; for a single element's text, use get text. For more systematic extraction patterns, see Extract data.

# Export the whole accessibility tree as JSON for easy parsing
$ chrome-use snapshot --json > slack-snapshot.json

# Get the plain text of a specific message / element
$ chrome-use get text @e_message_ref

# Current page URL and title, to keep as a reference
$ chrome-use get url
$ chrome-use get title

When parsing the JSON, watch for how these fields map:

Common refs & sidebar structure

The Slack sidebar is roughly: Threads / Huddles / Drafts & sent / Directories, followed by group headers (Starred, Channels, etc.) with channel treeitems under them, then Direct Messages, Apps, and a "More unreads" button at the bottom. The refs below are common locations, for reference only — go by your own snapshot.

Debugging

This stealth fork disables console/error capture by default — to use console / errors, start the session with AGENT_BROWSER_CAPTURE_CONSOLE=1, otherwise they return empty.

# You must first start the session with AGENT_BROWSER_CAPTURE_CONSOLE=1
$ chrome-use console
$ chrome-use errors

# When stuck, check the current page state
$ chrome-use get url
$ chrome-use get title
$ chrome-use screenshot page-state.png

Caveats

• Pure browser automation: it doesn't go through the Slack API, so there's no OAuth, webhooks, or bot tokens involved.
• Session-bound: screenshots and snapshots are all tied to the current browser session.
• May get rate-limited: Slack throttles overly dense actions — add a sleep 1 or wait between commands to let the UI catch up.
• Only your own workspace: you can't automate across workspaces.