Slack go-live: deploy + verify Socket Mode connection + end-to-end ticket flow

Context

Deploy outpost-slack-bot on Railway and verify end-to-end via a Slack Connect channel.

Source: the Outpost go-live runbook (internal), Phase 3.

Depends on: Slack pre-deploy setup issue.

Checklist

Deploy + health

• Trigger deploy (push to main or Railway manual deploy)
• Service boots without crash loop
• GET :3002/health returns OK
• Logs show "Running (socket mode: true)"
• No "Missing required environment variable" errors

Socket Mode connection

• Confirm the bot has connected to Slack's gateway (Bolt logs at startup)
• Bot appears as Active in the workspace member list
• No auth/scope errors in the Slack App's "App Manifest" → "Activity" log

End-to-end

• Send a test message in a monitored Slack Connect channel → verify a ticket is created in the Outpost dashboard (source SLACK, source URL points back)
• Worker picks up the AI_RESPONSE job
• AI response posts back as a Slack message in the same thread
• Reply in the thread from a non-team Slack user → appended to the existing ticket as a USER message (no duplicate ticket)
• Reply from a TEAM_MEMBER_IDS user → does NOT trigger an AI response (team-member filter works)
• Slash commands appear in the Slack UI and execute without error

Known follow-up (not blocking)

The Unified Customer Messaging Dashboard backend is partial — Slack messages don't feed a cross-platform pending-message store. Slack functions correctly through its native flow; the unified dashboard view ships as a fast-follow.

Acceptance

• A real message in a real monitored Slack Connect channel creates a ticket, gets an AI response posted back in-thread, and replies are threaded correctly
• 24h post-launch: error rate within targets, no duplicate tickets, team-member filter is honored

Start by reviewing the Slack pre-deploy setup issue, the Railway deployment for outpost-slack-bot, the :3002/health endpoint, and the Slack App Activity log. Deploy the service, verify Socket Mode and health, then exercise the monitored Slack Connect flow; done means threaded ticket creation and replies, correct team-member filtering, working slash commands, and acceptable 24-hour error behavior.