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HymalaiaBot Introduction

Hymalaia will connect to your Slack and listen for messages to answer.

You can easily configure rules for what channels Hymalaia should respond in, what knowledge sets should back each configured channel, and set filters to respond or not respond to different types of messages.

When Hymalaia identifies valid questions, it will respond in the message thread with:

  • An LLM generated answer
  • Quotes of the most relevant excerpts
  • Sources with highlighted keywords

Hymalaia also provides a configuration page so you can create custom settings for each slack channel (or you can just use the default settings for all your channels).

Since we are using Web Sockets, Hymalaia is able to initiate the connection. This means that this is able to work even if you are running Hymalaia inside a firewall protected VPC.

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Setting up

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Authorization

Note: You must be an admin of the Slack workspace to set up the Slack bot.

  1. Navigate and sign in to https://api.slack.com/apps.
  2. Create a new Slack app:
    • Click the Create New App button in the top right.
    • Select From an app manifest.
    • Select the relevant workspace and click Next.
    • Select the “YAML” tab, paste the following manifest into the text box, and click Next:
display_information:
  name: HymalaiaBot
  description: I help answer questions!
features:
  app_home:
    home_tab_enabled: false
    messages_tab_enabled: true
    messages_tab_read_only_enabled: false
  bot_user:
    display_name: HymalaiaBot
    always_online: true
  slash_commands:
    - command: /hymalaia
      description: Get back a private answer!
      usage_hint: Put your question here!
      should_escape: false
oauth_config:
  scopes:
    bot:
      - app_mentions:read
      - channels:history
      - channels:join
      - channels:read
      - chat:write
      - commands
      - groups:history
      - groups:read
      - im:history
      - im:read
      - mpim:history
      - reactions:write
      - users:read.email
      - users:read
settings:
  event_subscriptions:
    bot_events:
      - app_mention
      - message.channels
      - message.groups
      - message.im
      - message.mpim
  interactivity:
    is_enabled: true
  org_deploy_enabled: false
  socket_mode_enabled: true
  token_rotation_enabled: false
  1. Click Create.
  2. Generate an App-level Token under Basic Information → App-level tokens → Generate Token
    • Add the connections:write scope.
    • Copy the token.
  3. Navigate to OAuth & Permissions.
    • Click Install to Workspace.
    • Click Allow.
    • Copy the Bot User OAuth Token.

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Setting Hymalaia to use it

  • Go to the admin page in the top right of the Hymalaia UI.
  • In the menu, go to Bots.
  • Provide your Slack tokens.

Hymalaia will start responding in Slack channels after a short delay.

There are advanced options available via environment variables. Refer to the configs here: Slack Bot Setup Documentation