Channel Automation Plugin for Mattermost (Beta)

A Mattermost plugin that lets system admins build automated workflows triggered by channel events. Define automations that react to messages, post responses, and optionally call AI agents — all configured through a built-in management UI.

Features

• Trigger-action automation — Create named automations with a trigger and a sequence of actions that execute in order.
• Go template engine — Action fields support text/template syntax with access to trigger context (post, channel, user) and outputs from previous actions.
• Persistent work queue — Automation executions are durably queued in the KV store with bounded concurrency and automatic crash recovery.
• Failure notifications — When an action in an automation fails (e.g. an ai_prompt returns an error), the plugin DMs the automation's creator with the failing action ID and error message, rate-limited to once per hour per automation and coordinated cluster-wide via the KV store.
• Management UI — A dedicated webapp section for listing, creating, editing, enabling/disabling, and deleting automations.

Triggers

• Message Posted — Fire an automation when a new message appears in a specific channel. Bot posts, system messages, and webhook posts are automatically excluded.
• Schedule — Fire an automation on a recurring interval (e.g. every 1 hour, every 24 hours).
• Membership Changed — Fire an automation when a user joins or leaves a specific channel.
• Channel Created — Fire an automation when a new public channel is created in a specific team.
• User Joined Team — Fire an automation when a user joins the configured team. Optionally filter by user type (regular users or guests). Provides user info and the team's default channel.

Actions

• Send Message — Post a message as the plugin bot, with optional threading support.
• AI Prompt — Send a rendered prompt to an AI agent provided by the Mattermost AI Plugin and capture the response.

Getting Started

Installation

1. Download the latest release from the Releases page.
2. Upload the .tar.gz file through System Console > Plugins > Plugin Management.
3. Enable the plugin.

Creating an Automation

1. Open the Channel Automation section from the product menu.
2. Click Create Automation.
3. Give the automation a name, select a trigger type and channel, then add one or more actions.
4. Save and enable the automation.

Example: Echo Bot

A simple automation that replies in-thread whenever someone posts in a channel:

Field	Value
Trigger	message_posted on channel town-square
Action 1	send_message
Channel ID	{{.Trigger.Channel.Id}}
Reply To Post ID	{{.Trigger.Post.Id}}
Body	Echo: {{.Trigger.Post.Message}}

Example: AI Triage

An automation that asks an AI agent to classify incoming messages and posts the result:

Field	Value
Trigger	message_posted on a support channel
Action 1 (classify)	ai_prompt — Agent: your-agent, Prompt: Classify this message: {{.Trigger.Post.Message}}
Action 2	send_message — Body: Classification: {{(index .Steps "classify").Message}}

Trigger Types

Type	Description
message_posted	Fires when a user posts a message in the configured channel. Bot posts, system messages, and webhook posts are ignored.
schedule	Fires on a recurring interval from a configured first run time, or immediately when no first run time is set. Minimum interval is 1 hour.
membership_changed	Fires when a user joins or leaves the configured channel. Bot users are excluded.
channel_created	Fires when a new public channel is created. Requires team_id.
user_joined_team	Fires when a user joins the configured team. Bot users are excluded. Provides the team's default channel (typically town-square).

Action Types

Type	Description
send_message	Posts a message as the plugin bot. Supports channel_id, reply_to_post_id, as_bot_id, and body — all templated.
ai_prompt	Sends a rendered prompt to an AI agent via the Mattermost AI Plugin. Requires provider_type and provider_id in the action config.

Template Context

All action fields that support templates receive an AutomationContext with:

Variable	Description
{{.Trigger.Post.Id}}	ID of the triggering post
{{.Trigger.Post.Message}}	Message text
{{.Trigger.Post.ChannelId}}	Channel where the post was created
{{.Trigger.Post.ThreadId}}	Thread/root post ID
{{.Trigger.Channel.Id}}	Channel ID
{{.Trigger.Channel.Name}}	Channel name
{{.Trigger.Channel.DisplayName}}	Channel display name
{{.Trigger.User.Id}}	User ID of the post author
{{.Trigger.User.Username}}	Username
{{.Trigger.User.FirstName}}	First name
{{.Trigger.User.LastName}}	Last name
{{.Trigger.User.IsGuest}}	Whether the user is a guest
{{.Trigger.Team.Id}}	Team ID
{{.Trigger.Team.Name}}	Team name
{{.Trigger.Team.DisplayName}}	Team display name
{{.Trigger.Team.DefaultChannelId}}	Default channel ID for the team (typically town-square)
{{.CreatedBy}}	User ID of the automation creator
{{(index .Steps "<action_id>").Message}}	Output message from a previous action
{{(index .Steps "<action_id>").PostID}}	Post ID created by a previous send_message action
{{(index .Steps "<action_id>").Truncated}}	Whether the output message was truncated

Sensitive user fields (email, password, auth data) are stripped from the template context. Nickname is not available.

Configuration

Setting	Default	Description
Max Concurrent Automations	4	Maximum automation executions running concurrently per plugin instance. Requires a plugin restart to take effect.
Max Automations Per Channel	0	Maximum number of automations that can target a single channel. Set to 0 for unlimited.

API

The plugin exposes a REST API under /plugins/com.mattermost.channel-automation/api/v1. System admins are always allowed. For channel-scoped triggers, non-system users must have manage_channel_roles on every referenced channel (channel admins and team admins satisfy this via scheme resolution). For team-scoped triggers (channel_created, user_joined_team), non-system users must be a team admin on the referenced team(s).

Method	Path	Description
GET	/automations	List all automations
POST	/automations	Create a new automation
GET	/automations/{id}	Get an automation by ID
PUT	/automations/{id}	Update an automation
DELETE	/automations/{id}	Delete an automation
GET	/automations/{automation_id}/executions	List executions for an automation
GET	/executions/{id}	Get a single execution record
GET	/executions	List recent executions (admin only)

See docs/api.md for the full API reference with request/response schemas.

Development

Prerequisites

• Go
• Node.js (see .nvmrc)
• Make

Building

make all        # lint + test + build
make dist       # build plugin bundle only
make check-style # run all linters
make test       # run all tests

Deploying locally

Enable plugin uploads and optionally local mode, then:

make deploy

Or with credentials:

export MM_SERVICESETTINGS_SITEURL=http://localhost:8065
export MM_ADMIN_TOKEN=<your-token>
make deploy

To watch for webapp changes and auto-deploy:

export MM_SERVICESETTINGS_SITEURL=http://localhost:8065
export MM_ADMIN_TOKEN=<your-token>
make watch

Releasing

Versions are determined at compile time from git tags. To cut a release:

make patch       # patch release (e.g. 1.0.1)
make minor       # minor release (e.g. 1.1.0)
make major       # major release (e.g. 2.0.0)

Append -rc for release candidates (make patch-rc, make minor-rc, make major-rc).