The average knowledge worker loses 2+ hours a day to Slack — reading threads, typing replies, searching message history for decisions that were made three weeks ago.
Companion reads Slack for you, summarizes what matters, and drafts replies in your voice. Here's how to set it up.
What you need
- Companion installed (download here)
- An OpenRouter API key (free, pay per use)
- A Slack workspace (you need to be a member, any plan)
Step 1: Connect Slack
Open Settings → Integrations in Companion's sidebar. Find Slack and click Connect.
You'll go through Slack's standard OAuth authorization. Select the workspace you want to connect. Companion will request access to read messages and post on your behalf — you can scope this to specific channels if you prefer.
Authorization takes under a minute.
Step 2: Your first automation
Once connected, try the most useful starting point:
Summarize the last 24 hours of messages in the #general and #dev channels. Flag anything that looks like it needs a decision or response from me.
Companion reads the message history across both channels, identifies action items, and gives you a prioritized summary — in seconds, without you scrolling through everything yourself.
Or if you need to send something:
Send a message to #marketing that says we're pushing the launch date to June 5th and will share the updated schedule by end of week.
Companion sends it. The message comes from your Slack account, in the channel you specified.
What it costs
Reading and summarizing a day's Slack messages costs roughly $0.005–0.015 depending on message volume and model. Even a very active workspace with hundreds of messages per day would cost under $0.05 to summarize. Compare that to the 30–60 minutes of manual reading it replaces.
More workflows
Thread summaries: "Summarize the thread in #product about the dashboard redesign. What was decided and what's still open?"
Find decisions: "Search my Slack messages from the last two weeks for any mentions of the API pricing changes. What was agreed on?"
Draft a reply: "Draft a reply to @[name]'s message in #support about the onboarding issue, asking for more details about their operating system and Companion version"
Status updates: "Post a daily standup update to #dev: finished MCP documentation yesterday, working on the billing page today, no blockers"
Channel digest: "Every morning, give me a 3-bullet summary of what happened in #company overnight" — turn this into a routine with a scheduled Companion task
Combining Slack with email means you can also bridge communications: "Find the Slack thread about the client proposal and draft an email summary to send to the client" — Companion reads Slack, writes the email, ready to send from Gmail.
Achmad Bifari is Creative Designer and Social Manager at Companion. He writes the tutorials and runs @companionbyaios.