Slack to this Mac, not a rented sandbox.
DM or @mention Sideboard. The orchestrator on your Mac handles the turn. Agents, worktrees, repos and secrets stay on that machine — including anything only reachable on the corporate VPN. What leaves: Slack message text, through the relay.
How it works in Slack
1. Install Sideboard on the Mac
Apple Silicon desktop from GitHub Releases. Keep the app running. Slack cannot reach a sleeping machine — enable Settings → Advanced → Caffeinate while Slack Listen is on, or turn on caffeinate from the orchestration chat when you step away.
2. Connect the workspace
In Sideboard: Settings → Remote → Slack → Add via browser. Name this Mac (Work, Personal, …). Wait until status shows Relay connected.
3. Talk to that Mac
DM the bot work: check the failing CI, or in a channel @sideboard work: ship it. Prefix matches the Mac name. A follow-up message interrupts the in-progress turn; send stop to cancel without a new request. Closing the Sideboard chat (or every tab) does not turn Listen off — the next DM opens a new one.
What you can do
- Drive the global orchestrator from a DM or @mention
- Have it ping a coworker to review a PR a worktree just pushed
- Get their Slack reply back in Sideboard as information, not a command — the orchestrator continues
- List channels, read, and post from agents on this Mac (MCP)
What stays on the Mac
Agents, git worktrees, repo contents, secrets, and VPN-only APIs. The relay at relay.sideboard.cloud routes Slack chat. It does not host worktrees. Someone else messaging the bot needs their Sideboard online.
Install
Start from the desktop so tokens land on this Mac. Add to Slack from this page installs the bot in your workspace; then open Sideboard → Settings → Remote → Slack and finish Add via browser if the Mac has not picked up the tokens yet.
After Slack says the workspace is connected: open Sideboard → Settings → Remote, confirm Relay connected, name this Mac, then DM the bot. Uninstall from Slack → apps if you want the bot gone; disconnect the workspace in Settings → Remote too.
Agents on this Mac (Claude Code, Codex, OpenCode, Cursor) can generate inaccurate responses. Double-check code and replies. Slack message text is not used to train Sideboard models — Sideboard does not host a model. See Privacy and Support.
Looking for people, not the bot? The Sideboard community is a separate workspace at sideboard-ai.slack.com. How to join is on Support.
Free. English. You need a Mac running Sideboard; the Slack app does nothing on its own.