cotera

Slack Weekly Channel Digest

Summarize a week of channel conversations and schedule the digest for Monday morning. Your team catches up in 2 minutes instead of scrolling for 20.

Channel summariesWeekly recapsTeam updatesKnowledge sharing

The Challenge

People miss important channel conversations when they are busy, traveling, or on PTO. Coming back to hundreds of unread messages is overwhelming, and most people just mark the channel as read and move on. Important decisions, announcements, and action items get lost in the scroll. Nobody has time to read everything, but everyone needs to know what happened.

What This Prompt Does

Search the Week

Pull all messages from specified channels over the past 7 days

Summarize Highlights

Extract decisions, announcements, action items, and wins

Track Action Items

List open tasks with owners so nothing falls through the cracks

Schedule the Digest

Post the compiled summary automatically on Monday morning

The Prompt

The Prompt

Task

Create a weekly digest of Slack channel activity by searching the past week's messages using @Slack/Search MessagesName it "Slack/Search Messages" and call it with @Slack/Search Messages, summarizing key discussions, decisions, and action items, then scheduling the digest to post on Monday morning using @Slack/Schedule MessageName it "Slack/Schedule Message" and call it with @Slack/Schedule Message. Help your team stay informed without having to scroll through every message.

Input

The user will provide:

  1. Channels to include in the digest (e.g., #marketing, #product-updates, #announcements)
  2. Optional: the channel to post the digest to (default: same channel or #general)
  3. Optional: when to schedule the digest (default: Monday at 9:00 AM)
  4. Optional: specific topics or themes to prioritize

Example: "Create a weekly digest of #marketing and #product-updates and schedule it for Monday at 9am in #marketing-digest."

Context

Digest Workflow

Step 1: Search Channel History Use @Slack/Search MessagesName it "Slack/Search Messages" and call it with @Slack/Search Messages to pull messages from the specified channels for the past 7 days. Search broadly to capture all conversations, then filter for significance.

Step 2: Analyze and Summarize Review all messages and identify:

  • Key decisions: What was decided and by whom
  • Important announcements: New launches, policy changes, team updates
  • Action items: Tasks assigned or committed to
  • Active discussions: Debates or conversations that generated lots of replies
  • Shared resources: Links, documents, or tools that were shared
  • Wins and milestones: Celebrations, completed projects, achievements

Step 3: Schedule the Digest Use @Slack/Schedule MessageName it "Slack/Schedule Message" and call it with @Slack/Schedule Message to schedule the compiled digest for the specified time (default: Monday 9:00 AM). Format it for easy scanning so the team can catch up in 2 minutes.

What Makes a Good Digest

  • Start with a one-line summary: "This week in #marketing: 3 decisions, 2 launches, and 5 open action items"
  • Group by theme rather than chronologically
  • Bold the most important items
  • Include links to original threads for context
  • Keep it under 2 minutes to read
  • End with open items that need follow-up this week

Output

Weekly Digest — [Channel Name(s)] — Week of [Date]:

This week at a glance: [One-line summary of the week]

Decisions Made:

  • [Decision 1]: [Brief context and who decided]
  • [Decision 2]: [Brief context and who decided]

Key Announcements:

  • [Announcement 1]: [Brief summary]
  • [Announcement 2]: [Brief summary]

Active Discussions:

  • [Topic]: [Summary of the debate and current status]
  • [Topic]: [Summary and whether it was resolved]

Action Items:

  • [ ] [Task 1] — Owner: [Person] — Due: [Date if mentioned]
  • [ ] [Task 2] — Owner: [Person] — Due: [Date if mentioned]

Resources Shared:

  • [Link/doc title] shared by [Person] — [one-line description]

Wins:

  • [Achievement or milestone]

Carry Forward: Items from this week that need attention next week:

  • [Item 1]
  • [Item 2]

Digest scheduled for [Day] at [Time] via Cotera

Example Usage

Try asking:

  • →"Create a weekly digest of #marketing and #product-updates and schedule it for Monday at 9am"
  • →"Summarize what happened in #announcements this week and post it to #team-digest"
  • →"Build a digest of #engineering covering decisions, action items, and blockers from the past week"