Sources · Company source · export guide
Export Slack into a Company Brain — the who-knows-what map
A Slack export is the best map of who knows what inside a company, and the archive every team has and never searches. The brain reads its structure, not its conversations.
What a Slack export holds — and what the brain makes of it
A workspace admin exports public channels as JSON (every paid tier; private channels and DMs need an Enterprise Grid compliance export). The brain builder reads members as people, channels with their topics and membership as the who-knows-what map, and per-person message frequency as collaboration signal. Message text is never read — the parser stops at who posted and when. What you get is a brain that can say "the people who were in #payments-migration" and "who talks to whom", without a single message leaving the archive.
The tools that market a company brain from Slack connect to the live workspace and read along; none of them markets a path in from the export archive. This one reads the export you already have, once, on your own machine — and the people in it merge with your Workspace directory, your CRM and your wiki, matched by name.
Get the export
How to export your Slack data
The exact clicks, as they are today. Platforms move menus; the engine’s source docs are updated when they do.
- 01
Workspace admin → <workspace>.slack.com/services/export
- 02
Export (public channels; available on all paid tiers)
- 03
Private channels / DMs need an Enterprise Grid compliance export
- 04
Drop the archive on Slack in Studio’s Sources — or tell Claude Code or Codex “build my brain from this”. The source is detected by itself, even inside a combined archive.
Then, next month
An export is a snapshot. Drop a newer one and press Update: your edits and _notes/ are kept, and the update report says what changed.
Then ask it
What you can ask a brain built from Slack
Examples, not promises: the answer is whatever your notes hold, and every answer cites the notes it came from. The more exports you add, the more these questions cross sources.
- Who was in the channel for the project that shipped in March, and who is still here?
- Which two people in different departments talk most, and about which channels?
- Who knows the payments system — by channel membership and by who answers there?
limitOnly public channels are in a standard export; a channel’s topic and members are known, its conversations are not — and that is the design, not a gap to fill later.
Good to know
The honest answers.
Does it read what people wrote? No. Message text is never read; the brain keeps who, where and when as signal, and the rule is in open-source code you can audit.
Does it connect to our live Slack? No. It reads the export file you already downloaded. Drop in a newer export and press Update when you want this month in.
Is a Slack export enough on its own? It is a strong first source for a Company Brain. Add the Google Workspace directory and the people resolve onto org units; add the CRM and the channels link to deals.
Start
Your company’s exports already exist. Turn them into a brain.
Free and open source on your own machine. Or hand us the exports — done-for-you onboarding is in early access.
Second Brain Studio · Mac (Apple silicon and Intel), Windows and Linux · free · MIT
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