I built a Slack bot using Node.js and Slack Bolt that responds to slash commands like /isam-ping, /isam-catfact, and /isam-joke. It connects to Slack using Socket Mode and runs on a remote Linux server (Nest).
The challenging part was deployment. At first, the bot kept failing because the project was missing a package.json, so dependencies weren’t installing correctly. I also ran into issues with missing modules like axios, and later the bot stopped responding because the process wasn’t being kept alive after closing my terminal.
I fixed these problems by properly initializing the Node project, manually installing dependencies, and using PM2 to keep the bot running in the background. I also learned how Slack Socket Mode works and how environment variables are required for authentication.
I’m proud that I managed to fully deploy a working bot on a remote server and debug issues step by step until it stayed online reliably.
To test it, users can run the slash commands /isam-ping, /isam-catfact, and /isam-joke inside Slack after adding the bot to a workspace.
