0023 — The guest-side probe asks only about managed Slack Connect channels

Status: Accepted; refines 0021 Date: 2026-10-01

Context

A bot lists a Slack Connect channel that is public on its side only sometimes, and a private one it has not joined often not at all, so a channel one workspace discovered can look "not listed" in another that has it. v1.46.1 asked every other connected workspace, by id, once per pass, for every discovered shared channel. That spent a call per workspace per unmanaged channel per pass, and logged noise at warning because the expected "not visible" answer was matched the wrong way round.

Decision

The probe (conversations.info, bot token, include_num_members) runs only for channels a record manages. It asks the workspaces Slack names as guests when it names any besides the host and the reporters, otherwise exactly the workspaces the record names as sides (host and with). It never fails a pass. An expected channel_not_found or not_in_channel is a side the bot cannot see, logged at debug; a real error warns; each pass logs one guest-side probe summary at info.

Consequences

For a channel nobody manages yet, the Manage form can only prefill the sides that workspaces' own reports list; a side nobody listed must be chosen by the operator (private there and the bot not in it, or not shared). The cost is bounded by the number of records, not by what Slack shows.

Alternatives considered

Probe everything, rate-limit the calls. Rejected: unbounded in the size of the workspace list.

Remove the probe. Rejected: a managed channel's invisible side would show as unknown forever.