Add /skills slash command support.

[cowboy]

How it works

1. Type /skills <optional args> from any channel.
2. This should cause Slack to POST a payload to /command.
3. Slack should send a message back to you in the channel in which you used /skills.
   • If the channel is a DM with the bot, ti should echo the command back to you.
   • Otherwise, it should instruct you to check your DM with the bot.
4. The app should simulate a message to the bot from you in a DM.
5. The bot should respond in the DM.

Notes

• Slash command responses use the app icon, which is currently the default. Once the app has an icon, it'll look better.
• I don't think it's possible to have the app NOT respond to a slash command, as far as I can tell, it will always need to display something.

Testing with your own app

As part of Slack app setup, before running the bot:

1. Click on "App Credentials" in the left nav.
2. Make note of the Verification Token and add it to your .env file like so:
   • SLACK_VERIFICATION_TOKEN=your_verification_token_value
3. Click on "Slash Commands" in the left nav.
4. Click "Create new command".
5. Enter these settings:
   • Command: /skills
   • Request URL: https://c863a1e3.ngrok.io/command (use your ngrok url + /command)
   • Short Description: Show your skills.
   • Usage hint: [command]
6. Click "Save".

If you've already added the app to Slack, you'll have to refresh the ngrok server page with the "Add to Slack" button and re-add it, so the new commands scope is added to the integration. This shouldn't require changing or re-importing the database.

[cowboy]

FYI, you should be able to test this right now in our Slack with /skills [command]

[cowboy]

So... is this a worthwhile feature? Should I do anything differently? Skip it entirely?

[tkellen]

not sure how well this would scale to a large quantity of bots--seems like we should be making an index by the key we care about for lookups, or bypassing the instantiated bot entirely, somehow.

[cowboy]

This could easily be optimized later, I wrote it to be as generic as possible for now.

[tkellen]

This seems like a worthwhile feature if we were going to try to do serverless bots. Outside that context, I'm not sure what value it adds for the end user?

[cowboy]

@tkellen think about it this way, perhaps: How many times will people who haven't read the docs try to type /skills?

[cowboy]

I'm totally happy not landing this, but keeping it in mind in case we decide we want this functionality. It's all fine with me!

[tkellen]

@tkellen think about it this way, perhaps: How many times will people who haven't read the docs try to type /skills?

👍 that won me over