Collaborating with Cleric

How to work with your new teammate

Cleric works alongside your team in Slack and through the web interface. This guide explains the mechanics of how to interact with Cleric across different platforms.

Looking for investigation examples? See the Quick Start Guide or Common Use Cases for example prompts and workflows.

Starting Investigations

From Alerts (Automatic)

Configure Cleric to automatically investigate specific alerts when they fire. See Configuring Automations to set up triggers for your alert channels.

When a new alert looks like the same problem as a recent issue in the same channel, Cleric attaches it to that issue instead of starting a new one. See How Investigations Work.

On-Demand (Slack)

Start an investigation anytime by mentioning @Cleric in any channel where Cleric is present:

1. Type @Cleric followed by your question or issue description

2. Cleric responds with a 👀 emoji to acknowledge

3. Investigation results appear in a thread

4. Continue the conversation in the thread

Where to ask:

• Incident channels - during active issues

• Team channels - for general questions

• Alert channels - to supplement automatic investigations

On-Demand (Web)

From the Cleric web interface:

1. Navigate to <your-company>.app.cleric.ai

2. Click New issue in the sidebar

3. Describe the issue or select an example prompt

4. Click send to start the investigation

Deep Investigations with !investigate

By default, on-demand investigations (from Slack or web) use a conversational mode that asks clarifying questions as it goes. If you want Cleric to run a full deep investigation instead, include !investigate in your message:

@Cleric !investigate checkout latency is spiking on the payments service

This triggers the same thorough investigation that alert-triggered issues receive, with extended analysis and evidence gathering. Works in both Slack and the web UI, including follow-up messages in an existing thread.

The /new page shows example prompts for common scenarios like investigating errors, building incident timelines, or checking service health. Click any prompt to auto-fill the input and edit as needed.

You can view investigation progress, reasoning, and tool execution in the web interface.

Incident Channels

Cleric can join your incident channels as soon as they're created, so nobody has to invite it mid-incident. This is off by default; turn it on if your team opens a public Slack channel per incident.

Joining incident channels automatically

1. Open Integrations in the sidebar and select Slack

2. Under Settings, turn on Join incident channels automatically

3. If your incident channels don't start with inc-, change Channel name prefix and click Save

The prefix is matched against the start of the channel name. Capitals and a leading # are ignored, and it can contain only letters, numbers, hyphens and underscores. Choose a prefix that only incident channels use: inc would also match #incoming-leads, while inc- would not.

Turn it on when:

• Your incident tool (or your team) creates a public channel per incident

• Nothing in your incident process adds Cleric to those channels today

Leave it off when:

• Your incident workflow already invites @Cleric (for example, incident.io's Invite a Slack bot user to an incident channel step) and you don't want Cleric to investigate on its own. Cleric only starts investigations in channels it joined automatically, so to get them, switch from the workflow step to auto-join.

• You only want Cleric in the incidents where someone asks for it. Invite it with /invite @Cleric in those channels.

Slack doesn't let apps join private channels on their own, so auto-join only covers public incident channels. For private incident channels, add Cleric from your incident workflow or with /invite @Cleric. Auto-join also only applies to channels created after you turn it on; it doesn't join existing channels.

What Cleric does in an incident channel

Cleric can start an investigation in each incident channel it joins automatically, without anyone having to ask. This is off by default. To turn it on, open Integrations → Slack and, under Settings, turn on Join incident channels automatically and then Investigate new incident channels.

Only channels Cleric joined automatically are investigated. When someone invites Cleric, for example by mentioning it in a channel it isn't in, or adds it from the Slack integration page, Cleric joins without starting an investigation. Mention @Cleric to ask it something there as usual.

For each channel it joins automatically:

1. Cleric waits a few seconds, so the incident's announcement, the channel topic and the first messages have been posted

2. It reads the channel's name, topic and purpose, and what has been said so far

3. It posts in the channel that it is investigating, and puts its progress and findings in the thread under that message

Cleric starts one investigation per incident channel. Continue the conversation in Cleric's thread as you would for any investigation.

In any channel whose name starts with your incident channel prefix, Cleric treats the whole channel as context, not only the thread it was asked in: it reads what has been posted across the channel before forming hypotheses or answering.

Asking Cleric elsewhere in the channel

You can also mention @Cleric in a new message or another thread of the incident channel. Cleric answers there, as a separate chat or issue, and it knows about the investigation it started for the channel: it reads that investigation's current hypotheses and latest update before answering, and tells you when what it finds disagrees with them.

Finding incident work in the web app

• On the Issues page, the investigation Cleric started for an incident channel has the source Incident. Filter by Source → Incident to see only those.

• To see every issue from incident channels, including the ones people asked Cleric for there, filter by Slack channel → All incident channels.

• An issue from an incident channel links to the investigation Cleric started for the channel under Incident investigation in its details.

• It also shows how many other issues and chats came from the channel under Incident threads. Open it to see them.

• A chat asked in an incident channel links to that investigation from its header, next to the channel name.

To take Cleric out of an incident channel, run /remove @Cleric in the channel or remove it from the channel list on the Slack integration page.

Continuing Investigations

In Slack Threads

Cleric maintains context throughout a thread, so you can continue the conversation naturally. When Cleric's most recent message is nearby in the thread, you can reply conversationally and Cleric will respond automatically. To always get a response, mention @Cleric in your reply.

What you can do in threads:

• Ask follow-up questions without repeating context

• Request additional analysis or evidence

• Ask Cleric to check earlier time windows

• Verify that fixes resolved issues

• Explore alternative hypotheses

• Request deeper investigation into specific findings

Contextual Responses

Contextual responses allow Cleric to respond to thread replies without an explicit @Cleric mention. When you reply in a thread where Cleric recently sent a message, Cleric reads the conversation context and determines whether your reply expects a response.

When Cleric responds without a mention:

• Your reply is in a thread (not a top-level channel message)

• Cleric sent a message recently in the thread (within the last few messages)

• No other users have joined the conversation since Cleric's last message

• Your message is not directed at another person (no @user mentions to non-Cleric users)

• Contextual responses are not muted for the thread

When Cleric does not respond:

• Your message is a top-level channel message (not a thread reply)

• Cleric's last message is too far back in the thread

• Another user replied after Cleric, shifting the conversation away

• Your message mentions another user

• Your reply is an acknowledgment, thanks, or casual remark that does not need a response

When in doubt, Cleric errs on the side of responding. If Cleric responds when you did not need it to, you can mute contextual responses for that thread.

Thread Commands

Use these commands in any Slack thread where Cleric is active. Mention @Cleric followed by the command:

Command	What it does
@Cleric mute	Turns off contextual responses for this thread. Cleric will only respond when directly mentioned.
@Cleric unmute	Turns contextual responses back on for this thread.
@Cleric stop	Interrupts the active investigation in this thread.

Cleric confirms each command with a checkmark emoji. If the command cannot be executed (for example, stop when no investigation is running), Cleric reacts with a failure emoji instead.

Muting and unmuting apply per thread. Muting one thread does not affect other threads.

Scheduled Follow-ups

You can ask Cleric to check back on an issue after a delay. This is useful when you've deployed a fix and want to verify it worked, or when you're waiting for a change to propagate.

In any Slack thread or web chat, tell Cleric when to follow up:

@Cleric check the error logs again in 30 minutes and see if the errors have stopped

@Cleric follow up in an hour and let me know if the pod restarts again

Cleric will wait the specified time, then run the requested check and report back in the same thread. You can continue using the thread normally in the meantime.

Cleric is able to change or cancel a scheduled follow-up when requested.

Via Web Interface

From the Issue Details page (<your-company>.app.cleric.ai/issues/{id}):

1. View full investigation history and reasoning

2. See all tool executions and evidence gathered

3. Continue the conversation in the chat interface

4. Share the investigation URL with team members

The web interface provides more detailed visibility into Cleric's reasoning process and tool usage compared to Slack.

Responding to Cleric's Questions

For user-initiated investigations (started via @Cleric or the web app), Cleric may ask clarifying questions when it needs additional context to proceed, such as which environment to check or which service to prioritize. When this happens:

1. Reply in the same Slack thread or web chat

2. Cleric incorporates your answer and continues investigating

For alert-triggered investigations, Cleric does not ask questions. It completes the investigation with available data and reports any gaps in its findings.

Sharing Files with Cleric

You can attach files directly to your Slack messages when working with Cleric. This is useful for sharing:

• Log files or error outputs

• Configuration files

• Screenshots of dashboards or errors

• Code snippets or stack traces

Simply attach the file to your Slack message when mentioning Cleric.

You can attach multiple files in a single message. Cleric will process all file contents alongside your message.

File attachments are currently only supported in Slack. Adding and viewing attachments in the web interface is not yet available.