Developing locally
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As you're developing your workflow app, you can see your changes propagated to your workspace in real-time by using the slack run command. We refer to the workspace you develop in as your local environment, and the workspace you deploy your app to as your deployed environment.
You are not required to deploy your app. In fact, you might never need to use the slack deploy command — maybe there's something you want to do just one single time, or only when you need to — you can use slack run for that.
Otherwise, you should think of your local environment as a development environment. We even append the string (local) to the end of your app's name when running in this context.
Using the slack run command
When you enter slack run from the root directory of a project and you are logged into a Slack Enterprise Grid, you may also be asked to select a workspace within your organization to grant your app access to.
If administrators of your workspace have enabled Admin-Approved Apps, it means your app will need approval before it can be installed to your workspace.
✨ For information about getting your app approved, refer to access controls for developers.
The Slack CLI will then start a local development server and establish a connection to the (local) version of your app. Check that your instance of the Slack CLI is logged in to the desired workspace by running slack auth list.
To start the local development server, use the slack run command:
$ slack run
You'll know your development server is ready when your terminal says the following:
Connected, awaiting events
To turn off the development server, enter Ctrl+c in the command line.
Creating link triggers in local development
Link triggers are unique to each installed version of your app. This means that their "shortcut URLs" will differ across each workspace, as well as between local and deployed apps.
When creating a trigger, you must select the workspace you'd like to create the trigger in. Each workspace has a development version (denoted by (local)), as well as a deployed version.
✨ For more information about link triggers, refer to access controls for developers.
If your app has any triggers created within that development environment, they'll be listed when you run the slack run command. If you only created triggers within a production environment using the slack deploy command, they will not appear.
Creating triggers with the slack run command
If you have not used the slack triggers create command to create a trigger prior to running the slack run command, you will receive a prompt in the Slack CLI to do so.
Let's say you've created a Slack app and tried to run the slack run command without first creating a trigger. The Slack CLI will ask you which workspace you'd like to run your app in, and will then prompt you to choose a trigger definition file. If you choose a file, the trigger will be created and the app will run. If you do not choose a trigger definition file or if you do not yet have one created, a trigger will not be created. No worries either way, as your app will still continue with the run operation.
App visibility
As discussed above, once you create an app and run it using the slack run command, a link trigger will be generated for your app. Once that link trigger is posted in a public channel within your workspace, other channel members can click it and interact with your app even though your app has not been deployed.