customize-agent - Paradime

When you mention @Paradime in a Slack channel or send it a direct message, DinoAI answers using a programmable agent. Out of the box this is a generic assistant — but you can fully customize its personality, goal, and available tools by defining an agent named dinoai-slack-bot in your repo. You can also give any agent a Slack presence, so runs triggered from the API or a schedule post their progress and results into a channel of your choice.

How Slack Triggering Works

There are two ways a message in Slack starts an agent run:

Trigger	How
Channel mention	Mention `@Paradime` in any channel the bot has been invited to. Replying with a mention inside an existing agent thread resumes that same session with full context.
Direct message	Send the bot a plain DM — no mention needed.

When a run starts from Slack, DinoAI looks for .dinoai/agents/dinoai-slack-bot.yml in your repository:

File exists → the Slack bot uses your custom role, goal, backstory, and tool restrictions.
File missing → the bot falls back to the default general-purpose assistant with all tools available.

Customizing the Default Slack Bot

Create .dinoai/agents/dinoai-slack-bot.yml — the name is the convention that binds it to Slack triggers:

name: dinoai-slack-bot   # this exact name makes it the Slack default
version: 1

role: >
  Analytics support bot for the data team. You answer questions about our
  dbt™ project, data models, and pipeline runs directly in Slack.

goal: >
  Give concise, accurate answers about models, lineage, and run status.
  Always post your final answer back to the Slack thread.

backstory: >
  You are the first line of support for analytics questions. You keep
  answers short and Slack-friendly, link to relevant files, and escalate
  anything requiring code changes to a human.

tools:
  mode: allowlist
  list:
    - read_file
    - search_files_and_directories
    - ripgrep_search
    - run_sql_query

What Appears in the Thread

Content	Behavior
Setup checklist	Animated during spin-up, removed once the agent starts working.
Tool activity	A single status line updated in place — never a wall of messages.
Agent messages	Posted via `post_slack_message`, rendered as Slack markdown.
Mermaid diagrams	Code blocks tagged `mermaid` are rendered to an image and uploaded to the thread.
GitHub PR links	Extracted from messages and posted as a View PR action button.
Errors	Startup or configuration problems post as a warning block with guidance.

Prerequisites

The Paradime Slack integration must be configured for your workspace.
The Paradime bot must be invited to any channel it posts to: /invite @Paradime.
A data warehouse connection must be configured for the workspace.

​How Slack Triggering Works

​Customizing the Default Slack Bot

​What Appears in the Thread

​Prerequisites

​Related

How Slack Triggering Works

Customizing the Default Slack Bot

What Appears in the Thread

Prerequisites

Related