step: chat-scan — surface recent messages from a configured chat channel

[hartsock]

Summary

A chat-scan step type that queries a chat platform for recent messages in a set of configured channels and includes a structured summary in the routine report.

Motivation

Team awareness is a common morning-routine need: what happened in the support channel overnight, are there any unresolved escalations, did a key decision land in the team channel. Without a native step this requires either a bespoke script or wiring the full chat platform into a custom step. A generic chat-scan step with a pluggable transport covers the pattern once.

Proposed design

Step type: chat-scan

Config shape:

[[routines.morning.steps]]
name     = "team channel"
type     = "chat-scan"
platform = "slack"            # slack | msteams | discord (transport)
channels = ["#support", "#team-main"]
look_back_h = 24              # hours of history to fetch
max_results = 20
env      = { CHAT_TOKEN = { file = "~/.keys/chat-token" } }

Data contract (data field):

{
  "schema": "chat-scan/1",
  "channels": [
    {
      "name":          "#support",
      "message_count": 12,
      "unresolved":    3,
      "latest_ts":     "ISO 8601",
      "messages": [
        { "ts": "ISO 8601", "author": "string", "text": "string", "thread_count": 0 }
      ]
    }
  ]
}

Behavior:

• Auth failure or unreachable platform: skipped = true — routine continues.
• Each channel is fetched independently; one channel failing does not skip others.
• All network I/O through agent-bridle net Caveats axis.
• output field contains a human-readable summary (counts + flagged threads); data carries the full payload.

Transport model

Platforms differ enough that each transport is a feature-gated sub-module:

• slack transport: Slack Web API conversations.history
• msteams transport: MS Graph chats/messages (future)
• discord transport: Discord REST API (future)

The platform key selects the transport; unavailable platforms produce a compile-time feature-gate error with a clear message.

Alternatives considered

• script wrapper per channel: works today but produces opaque text and doesn't compose.
• harness calling a chat CLI: viable; mcp-client could cover CLI-wrapped chat MCP servers, but a native step enables structured output without a separate CLI dependency.

Acceptance criteria

• chat-scan step type in modulex-core (or a plugin crate)
• slack transport behind a feature flag
• Per-channel soft-failure
• data schema pinned with golden file test
• modulex doctor reports platform reachability and token validity