Setting up Echofy
Two sources today. Either one takes about five minutes, and you can connect both on the free plan, watching one channel and one repository at the same time.
Watches, records and answers
Connect your workspace
In the Echofy console, open Settings, then Sources, then Add to Slack. Slack shows you exactly what Echofy can see before you approve it.
Invite Echofy to a channel
In the channel you want watched, type the invite command below. Echofy only ever sees channels it has been invited to, so nothing is watched by accident.
/invite @EchofyLet something come up twice
Echofy stays quiet the first time. When the same question is asked a second time in that channel, it drafts a short checklist and waits for you.
Approve it in the console
Open the Queue tab, read the draft, and approve or reject it. Nothing answers your team until you do.
Ask it anything it covers
Echofy answers only from approved checklists and cites the one it used. If nothing approved covers the question, it says so rather than guessing.
/ask how do I get staging access?Every Slack command
You never have to remember these. Type /echofy in Slack and it prints the list with what each one does.
| Command | What it does |
|---|---|
/ask <question> | Answers from approved checklists only, and cites the one it used. |
/note_it | Starts recording this channel into a document. |
/note_ends | Stops recording and drafts the document. Echofy also wraps up after 10 quiet minutes. |
/documents | Lists the approved documents you are allowed to read in this channel. |
/plan | Shows which plan this workspace is on and what you have used. |
/echofy | Lists every command, in Slack, whenever you forget one. |
Recording a decision as a document
Some knowledge never repeats itself. It gets decided once, in one conversation, and then quietly lost. Point Echofy at that conversation instead of waiting for it to come round again.
- Type
/note_itwhen the conversation starts. Everyone in the channel sees that recording began, because a tool that listens silently is a tool nobody trusts. - Type
/note_endswhen you are done, or say nothing for ten minutes and Echofy closes it for you. - Edit the draft in the Document Queue. It is a real editable document, not a transcript.
- Approve it. The PDF is rendered at that moment and frozen, so the copy your team reads is exactly the one that was signed off.
Watches code review
Connect your GitHub account
Settings, then Sources, then Connect GitHub. You are sent to GitHub's own consent screen, never a form on our site.
Choose which repositories it can see
GitHub asks you to pick repositories. Echofy reads issues, pull request descriptions, review comments and discussions in the ones you pick, and nothing else.
Repeat yourself in review
When the same review note lands twice, or two issues ask the same thing, Echofy drafts a checklist. Review comments include the diff, so it recognises the same feedback on similar code in a different file.
Approve it in the same queue
GitHub drafts arrive in the same console queue as Slack ones, tagged with their source. One place to approve, whatever produced it.
GitHub has no slash commands. It is a source Echofy watches, not a place you talk to it. Checklists drafted from a repository are approved in the console and answered in Slack.
What Echofy reads on GitHub
Seven kinds of activity, and they all count towards the same thing. The repository is the unit, so an issue and a review comment about the same problem pair up with each other. You never need two of the same kind.
| What you do | What Echofy reads |
|---|---|
| Open an issue | Title and body |
| Comment on an issue | The comment |
| Open a pull request | Title and body |
| Comment on a line in a pull request | The comment and the code it is attached to |
| Submit a review with a body | The review text |
| Start a discussion | Title and body |
| Comment on a discussion | The comment |
Ignored on purpose: pushes, workflow runs, labels, stars and forks. So is anything sent by a bot, which is what stops Dependabot and CI from feeding their own output back in.
Line comments are the one Slack cannot do
When you comment on a specific line, Echofy takes the surrounding diff along with your words. So two reviewers correcting the same mistake in different files, in completely different language, still pair up, because the match is on the code rather than the phrasing. That is the knowledge that normally only exists in a senior engineer's head and gets retyped every few weeks.
What the free plan covers
- One Slack channel and one GitHub repository, at the same time
- Ten approved checklists
- Three approved documents
- Deleting something approved frees its slot again
- Move which channel or repository is watched whenever you like
Check what you have used at any time with /plan in Slack, or on the billing tab in the console.
When nothing happens
Nothing happens when I post in a channel
Echofy is almost certainly not in that channel. Type /invite @Echofy there. An uninvited channel looks exactly like a quiet one.
Nothing happens in a repository
Check the Echofy GitHub App has access to it under Settings, Applications, Configure. A repository it cannot see sends nothing at all.
I posted twice and no draft appeared
Both have to be in the same channel or repository, and recognisably about the same thing. Two genuinely unrelated messages correctly produce nothing.
Echofy says it works in one channel only
That is the free plan. The first channel you speak in claims the slot, and you can move it any time from Settings, Sources, Watched channel.
A document will not open in a channel
Approved documents can be scoped to specific channels, so a backend runbook stays out of the frontend channel. Change the scope on the document's card in the console.