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How to build a SlackBot agent using ClickHouse MCP Server

In this guide, you'll learn how to build a SlackBot agent. This bot allows you to ask questions about your ClickHouse data directly from Slack, using natural language. It uses the ClickHouse MCP Server and PydanticAI.

Example project

The code for this example can be found in the examples repository.

Prerequisites​

  • You'll need to have uv installed
  • You'll need access to a Slack workspace
  • You'll need an Anthropic API key, or API key from another LLM provider

Create a Slack App​

  1. Go to slack.com/apps and click Create New App.
  2. Choose option From scratch and give your app a name.
  3. Select your Slack workspace.

Install the app to your workspace​

Next, you'll need to add the app created in the previous step to your workspace. You can follow the instructions for "Add apps to your Slack workspace" in the Slack documentation.

Configure Slack app settings​

  • Go to App Home
    • Under Show Tabs → Messages Tab: Enable Allow users to send Slash commands and messages from the messages tab
      • Go to Socket Mode
        • Enable Socket Mode**`
        • Note down the Socket Mode Handler**for the environment variableSLACK_APP_TOKEN`
      • Go to OAuth & Permissions
        • Add the following Bot Token Scopes:
          • app_mentions:read
          • assistant:write
          • chat:write
          • im:history
          • im:read
          • im:write
          • channels:history
        • Install the app to your workspace and note down the Bot User OAuth Token for the environment variable SLACK_BOT_TOKEN.
      • Go to Event Subscriptions
        • Enable Events
        • Under Subscribe to bot events, add:
          • app_mention
          • assistant_thread_started
          • message:im
        • Save Changes

Add environment variables (.env)​

Create a .env file in the project root with the following environment variables which will allow your app to connect to ClickHouse's SQL playground.

You can adapt the ClickHouse variables to use your own ClickHouse server or Cloud instance, if you would prefer.

Using the bot​

  1. Start the bot:

  2. In Slack:

    • Mention the bot in a channel: @yourbot Who are the top contributors to the ClickHouse git repo?
    • Reply to the thread with a mention: @yourbot how many contributions did these users make last week?
    • DM the bot: Show me all tables in the demo database.

The bot will reply in the thread, using all previous thread messages as context if applicable.

Thread Context: When replying in a thread, the bot loads all previous messages (except the current one) and includes them as context for the AI.

Tool Usage: The bot uses only the tools available via MCP (e.g., schema discovery, SQL execution) and will always show the SQL used and a summary of how the answer was found.