How to Build a Slack-Powered AI Agent with Frontegg

Learn how to integrate Slack into your AI agent using Frontegg’s identity infrastructure. This guide walks you through the full OAuth 2 setup with Slack, from app registration to sending messages.

AI agents are becoming increasingly powerful. But for them to operate inside user tools like Slack, they must be securely authorized to do so. In this guide, we walk you through how to connect Slack to your AI agent using Frontegg AI, the first identity infrastructure purpose-built for AI agent builders.

Frontegg AI intro

Frontegg AI manages:

• Multitenant identity for agents
• Secure tool authorization
• Token lifecycle and refresh handling

This means your agent can act on behalf of users using tools like Slack, GitHub, or Notion, without needing to manually implement, maintain, and monitor homegrown auth.

Steps one through three don’t have to follow this order, necessarily. The core here is identical to connecting any ol’ OAuth 2 Client (which you could literally use the same Slack app as usual (although, probably best to keep them as separate apps).

The Slack app is the “client”, and the Frontegg AI Tool you create mirrors how you might set up a new client with your IdP, or, you know, the thing you do when you copy the Client ID, Client Secret, and Redirect URI from one place to another.

The “magic” is taken care of by Frontegg. At least, that’s what I’m pretty sure the ‘M’ in MCP stands for. Semantics aside, by taking nearly the same steps as you would if you were to integrate OAuth 2, you’re able to add way more power to your AI agent without any of the grind of setting up MCP servers.

And, the maintenance. Did you feel that shiver down your spine just as a flash of lightning and the booming sound of thunder tear the sky apart as it suddenly starts to downpour outside, too?

Step 1: In Frontegg, create an AI tool

Sign up for free at: https://frontegg-prod.us.frontegg.com/oauth/account/sign-up

In your Frontegg administrative dashboard:

• Navigate to AI Agents > Tools > Add integration
• Choose “Slack”
• Key settings:
  • Name – give the new tool integration a helpful name
  • Client ID – from your Slack App
  • Client Secret – from your Slack App
  • Redirect URI – copy over to your slack app (https://api.frontegg.com/app-integrations/resources/oauth/v1/callback)

This configuration creates the link between Frontegg and your Slack app, allowing you to securely integrate Slack into your AI agent. You can send messages, view and edit channels, react to messages, and with the properly entitled agent (i.e., the correct scopes are applied).

Documentation – Tool Configuration

Step 2: Create a Slack OAuth App

Head over to the Slack API Console and:

1. If you don’t already have one, create a new app
2. Under OAuth & Permissions, add your redirect URI from the Frontegg admin dashboard in the previous step
3. Save and copy the Client ID and Client Secret

Reference: Slack OAuth Docs

Step 3: Configure OAuth in Frontegg

Now return to the Frontegg Dashboard > Slack Tool:

1. Input:
   • Client ID from Slack
   • Client Secret from Slack

Save the configuration to enable OAuth flow for Slack.

Step 4: Add OAuth Scopes in Slack

Recapping where we are, we’ve created an OAuth app with our tool vendor, Slack in this case, and taken that app’s Client ID and Client Secret over to our Frontegg AI tool configuration. And, finally, we updated the Slack app’s OAuth configuration with the redirect URI given by Frontegg. To recap, we have completed the following steps:

• Created an OAuth app with our tool vendor, Slack.
• Transferred the Client ID and Client Secret from the Slack app to our Frontegg AI tool configuration.
• Updated the Slack app’s OAuth configuration with the redirect URI provided by Frontegg.

Now, we can move on to adding scopes to our OAuth app in order to enable the features we want from the app. And the scopes you need will be determined by the tool capabilities that you enable.

In the table on the left are the tool capabilities and on the right are the associated scopes that need to be added or enabled to use that specific capability. So, specifically for our Slack tool here, you can see the first tool action available is list channels and it will require adding or enabling the ‘channels:read’ OAuth scope.

I recommend only selecting necessary ones for your use case just as a general best security practice. After completing the tool configuration, you’ll see it pop up in your list.

If you need a little help remembering all of the OAuth scopes you need to add, you can open the tools page and scroll down to the bottom.

So, let’s start adding those scopes to the Slack app. You can add the ‘user auth’ token scopes for the kind of use case where you’re fetching the identity of the end-user.

And, once you’ve got those all enabled, next we’ll test it out.

Add OAuth scopes according to the tool capabilities selected

Now, we can move on to adding scopes to our OAuth app in order to enable the features we want from the app. And the scopes you need will be determined by the tool capabilities that you enable.

In the AI Tool configuration in the admin dashboard, the table shows actions or capabilities on the left with the associated Slack OAuth scopes needed on the right. So, specifically for our Slack tool here, you can see the first tool action available is list channels and it will require adding or enabling the ‘channels:read’ OAuth scope.

I recommend only selecting necessary ones for your use case just as a general best security practice. After completing the tool configuration, you’ll see it pop up in your list.

• Add OAuth scopes based on selected tool capabilities to enable app features.
  • For example, the ‘list channels’ action for the Slack tool needs the ‘channels:read’ scope.

Tips:

• Select only necessary scopes for best practice in least privilege security.
• A list of required scopes is available on the tools page.
• ‘User Auth’ scopes are for the permissions of your app’s end-users.

Testing the integration

You can now embed into your own AI Agent application or you can try out the sample app: https://github.com/frontegg/frontegg-ai-agent-example.

You’re now ready to test:

1. Trigger the Slack install flow via your agent (e.g. CLI, SDK, or agent UI)
2. Complete the Slack OAuth flow
3. Watch the agent redirect back with tokens stored by Frontegg
4. Send a message in Slack from your agent!

OAuth scopes

OAuth scopes define a contract between the parties in the SSO circle that enable certain actions or permissions. In other words, they allow the user to authorize your AI agent, app, or “OAuth Client”  to perform some action or access some data.

But, in many OAuth systems, when you configure your OAuth client, you must configure what scopes that client should be able to request. This minimizes the risk of a bad actor making all kinds of privileged calls and accessing info the associated agent or app (which it never even needed in the first place) inside of the boundaries of your security.

Here are a few examples of Slack scopes and what they permit your AI Agent to do when they are given the appropriate authorization:

Slack Scopes Reference

Use least privilege: only request the scopes your agent actually needs.

Final thoughts

With Frontegg AI, connecting tools like Slack is no longer a security headache. You gain a robust token store, easy OAuth configuration, and multitenant identity management for AI agents.

Explore more at developers.frontegg.com

Got questions? Join our Frontegg Slack Community or check out Frontegg AI Docs