Is it possible to indicate "Bot user typing... " using boltjs

[dennismphil]

Description

Describe your issue here. Using Bolt JS is it possible to emit an event showing a typing indicator. I noted this was possible using the node-slack-sdk https://github.com/slackapi/node-slack-sdk/issues/98

What type of issue is this? (place an x in one of the [ ])

• [ ] bug
• [ ] enhancement (feature request)
• [x] question
• [ ] documentation related
• [ ] example code related
• [ ] testing related
• [ ] discussion

Requirements (place an x in each of the [ ])

• [x] I've read and understood the Contributing guidelines and have done my best effort to follow them.
• [x] I've read and agree to the Code of Conduct.
• [x] I've searched for any related issues and avoided creating a duplicate issue.

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[mwbrooks]

Hey @dennismphil,

The user_typing event is a feature of the RTM API, but unfortunately it's not available in the Events API or Web API. As a warning, the RTM API is deprecated and only available to classic Slack apps. If you're submitting to the App Directory, you will not be able to submit a classic Slack app.

This comment https://github.com/slackapi/node-slack-sdk/issues/1130#issuecomment-740149464 goes into some details on why this decision was made and some possible workarounds if creating the "bot is typing..." is important to you.

Hope that helps! Michael

[migsterrrrr]

Are you revisiting this given conversational bots are on the up? I love the fact that chat GPT is typing slowly when talking, it's bot like, but consumable. I wonder if you can build something similar, like throttling the message created by apps?

[seratch]

@migsterrrrr The only approach that we can suggest is to use chat.update API to reflect progress in the same message. This means that you can start with posting a message like "Now processing ..." using chat.postMessage API, and then you can call chat.update API to update the message. I know that this may not be ideal for you, but we don't have any plans to enhance chat.* APIs for your use case at least in the short term.

[martinseanhunt]

An alternative to this would be to allow more generous rate limits while using websockets, allowing us to stream a response while working with conversational, llm driven applications.

[glennblock]

Thanks for this. @seratch Would an ascii spinner (think terminal / bbs days) work here or adding dots to an existing message? Imagine on some sort of interval. We have an AI bot and responses can take a bit. We were thinking of something along these lines to keep the user informed that it is "thinking".

Would be nice if Slack just had an API that lets you turn on / off "Bot is typing", or better yet as @martinseanhunt said a way to start streaming in word by word, though I imagine that could be a significantly bigger lift.

[david1542]

I'm joining to @martinseanhunt comment. It'd be extremely useful to allow streaming of messages into Slack. LLMs responses usually take 5-20 seconds so it'd develop the user experience.