Using Sonar with Slack.

Slack is where a lot of real decisions get made, in threads nobody writes up. When you connect Slack, Sonar asks for read-only user scopes (channel, group, direct-message and group-message history, plus the member list so it can tell who said what) and then does nothing until you open the picker and choose the conversations it may read. That pick is the consent boundary.

Each read covers the last seven days of the picked conversations: up to 80 messages per conversation and the replies in up to eight of its threads, human messages only. Bots, joins and one-word reactions are skipped, and so is anything under twenty characters, because a thanks is never a story. The text is mined in one pass for moments and discarded.

Every picked conversation can also teach Sonar your spoken register, because Slack messages are author-labelled and Sonar distills only the lines you wrote, skipping everyone else's. That is a separate opt-in in Settings, Voice, off until you turn it on, and it shapes scripts and takes, never your written posts.

• A Sonar account.
• A Slack workspace you are a member of. The connection is a user token: it reads as you, only what you can already open, and adds no bot to your channels.
• A minute to pick the conversations. Nothing is read until you do.

1. 01

   Open Connected sources

   Sign in at app.meetsonar.co and open Settings, Connected sources. On your first day the Connect your week row on Home opens the same list.

2. 02

   Flip the Slack switch

   Slack's consent screen lists the read-only permissions Sonar asks for as you. Choose Allow. You land back in Sonar with the connection made and nothing read yet.

3. 03

   Pick the conversations

   The picker lists the channels, group messages and direct messages you can see, rooms first and then people; private rooms wear a lock. Pick the ones where real decisions happen and save.

4. 04

   Let the first read run

   Saving the pick starts the first read. Moments land on Home shortly after, and the Slack row shows the receipt: how many messages were read, from which conversations, and how many moments were kept.

There is nothing to operate. Sonar reads about once a week and when you save a new pick; the Sync all button at the top of Connected sources runs every source now. The Slack row names the conversations it reads and shows the last read's receipt.

Change the pick any time with the Channels button on the row. Moments carry their channel as provenance, for your eyes only; in a draft, the people in the thread become roles.

A week with nothing story-shaped says so on the row. A read where every picked conversation failed is reported as a failure rather than a quiet week.

Settings, Connected sources, flip the Slack switch off. Sonar revokes the token with Slack and deletes it along with the pick and the receipt; nothing from Slack can be read from then on.

Moments already mined stay in your workspace because they are yours: delete any one, everything from Slack, or all of them in Settings, Intelligence, Moments, or set a retention rule of 30 days, 90 days or a year and Sonar sweeps daily.

Messages are processed in memory and discarded after the extraction pass; they are never stored. What stays is the moments (a title, an angle, one line of detail, the channel as provenance) and the row's receipt with the conversation names. The token is server side only, encrypted at rest, and can reach only what you can already read.

Your Slack text is sent transiently to the AI provider that mines it and not retained for training under its API terms; it is never shared with other users.

The full account is the privacy policy; the terms of service cover the account itself.

Questions or trouble connecting? Email hello@meetdistilled.com. Hours and the first-reply time are on the support page.