Create Linear issues from Slack messages
A Slack + Linear agent flow
Bug reports rarely arrive as tickets. Someone drops a screenshot in #support, three people reply, and by Monday the thread is buried under standup chatter. This recipe hands your agent the job of turning those threads into Linear issues. It reads the channel with Slack's conversations_history tool, picks out the message that describes a real problem, and calls Linear's create_issue with a title, a written-up description, and the team you point it at. Nothing here fires on its own: an MCP server answers calls rather than pushing events, so the agent runs when you ask or on whatever cadence you set. What you stop doing is the copy-paste between the place a bug gets mentioned and the place it gets tracked.
The flow
conversations_historyGets messages from a channel or DM by channel ID with smart pagination.
create_issueCreates a new issue or sub-issue with title, description, and workflow metadata.
Step by step
- Point it at a channel
Give the agent the channel ID where reports land, like #support, and tell it what counts as a real bug versus a question or chatter.
- Read and triage
The agent pulls recent messages with conversations_history, then reads each thread to separate an actual defect from a duplicate or a how-do-I question.
- Write the issue
It calls create_issue with a clear title, a description that quotes the reporter and links the thread, and the team you assigned.
- Confirm back
If you turn on message posting, the agent drops the new issue link into the thread so the reporter can see it is tracked.
Tell your agent
Check #support every morning. For each message that describes a real bug and isn't already filed, open a Linear issue in the Eng team with a title, a summary that quotes the reporter, and a link to the Slack thread.
Setup
This flow needs both servers connected to your agent. Follow each install guide:
Worth knowing
- conversations_history takes a channel ID, not a name. Have the agent resolve #support to its ID once with channels_list and reuse it.
- Posting the issue link back into Slack uses conversations_add_message, which Slack's server ships disabled by default. Enable it if you want the confirmation step.
- create_issue needs a team. Name a default team in the prompt so the agent doesn't stall asking which one.
Questions
- Does it file duplicates?
- Only if you let it. Tell the agent to search open issues with list_issues before it creates one, and to skip anything already tracked for the same report.
- Can it run without me asking each time?
- The server doesn't watch Slack; it responds when called. Schedule the agent on your side, say every fifteen minutes, and it reads the channel and files what's new on that cadence.
- Which messages become issues?
- Whatever your prompt defines as a bug. Most teams scope it to one channel and ask the agent to ignore replies, questions, and anything already linked to a ticket.