Summary

Mentioning a Slack user-group (subteam) does not wake any of the OpenClaw agents that belong to it. The Slack adapter's mention preflight only recognizes direct <@UXXX> tokens against each bot's own user id; it has no awareness of <!subteam^SXXX> tokens at all. So a message like:

<!subteam^S0B07LS458B> ping

…in a channel where three agents are subscribed will route to one of them, evaluate wasMentioned=false, hit the room's requireMention gate, and silently drop. The agents are working as coded, but it's a real adapter gap as soon as anyone uses Slack user-groups to address a fleet of agents.

Repro

1. Create a Slack user-group (e.g. via usergroups.create or the Slack UI) and add 2+ OpenClaw bot users as members.
2. From any other Slack user, post <!subteam^SXXXXXX> hello in a channel where the agents have an active config.
3. Expected: each subscribed agent treats it as an @-mention and is eligible to reply (subject to the usual policies).
4. Actual: no agent replies. Verbose logs show wasMentioned=false for each candidate route.

Root cause

extensions/slack/src/monitor/message-handler/prepare.ts (compiled as dist/extensions/slack/prepare-*.js) computes:

const explicitlyMentioned = Boolean(
  ctx.botUserId && message.text?.includes(`<@${ctx.botUserId}>`),
);

…and feeds that into matchesMentionWithExplicit. There is zero handling of <!subteam^...> tokens anywhere in the Slack extension. Slack's bundled @slack/types references subteam only as a block-kit element type — never the inbound mention path.

Options considered

1. Don't change behavior, document. Tell users to mention each <@UXXX> individually. Loses the operational value of subteams entirely.
2. Full Slack-API expansion. Detect <!subteam^SXXX> tokens, call usergroups.users.list (cached, with subteam_updated / subteam_members_changed event invalidation), expand to user ids, match each against botUserId. Most "magical" — works without per-agent config — but requires a new Slack scope (usergroups:read), an API cache, and event subscription wiring.
3. Config-only allowlist (this PR). Add groupChat.subteamMentions: string[] (resolved per-agent, falling back to global). When a <!subteam^SXXX> token appears in the message and SXXX is in the agent's list, treat it as an explicit mention. No new scopes, no cache, no event subscriptions. Each agent self-declares which subteams should wake it.

I went with option 3 first because:

• ships value immediately for the common case ("I built a group with these 3 agents in it, mention them as a group")
• no new Slack OAuth scopes
• no API churn or eventual-consistency surface
• composes cleanly with option 2 later if there's appetite (the resolver in option 3 just becomes a fast path / fallback when the API isn't available)

Option 2 stays on the table; happy to follow up with it.

Proposed change (PR attached)

PR: see linked PR.

• New field: GroupChatConfig.subteamMentions?: string[] (already inherited by both cfg.messages.groupChat and per-agent agents.list[].groupChat).
• New helper module extensions/slack/src/monitor/message-handler/subteam-mentions.ts with:
  • extractSlackSubteamMentionIds(text) — pulls all <!subteam^SXXX> ids out of a message, uppercased and deduped.
  • matchesConfiguredSubteamMention(ids, cfg, agentId) — resolves the configured allowlist (agent override beats global, presence-as-override mirrors mentionPatterns semantics) and tests for intersection.
• prepare.ts now computes isExplicitlyMentionedForAgent(agentId) and feeds it into matchesMentionWithExplicit after routing has chosen the agent. Pre-routing seeding is unchanged (still bot-id only); the post-routing re-route on wasMentioned && !seedTopLevelRoomThreadBySource already handles thread re-seed when the subteam path is what triggered the wake.
• Unit tests cover token extraction, agent override semantics, and case-insensitivity.

Configuration example

{
  "agents": {
    "list": [
      {
        "id": "jack",
        "groupChat": { "subteamMentions": ["S0B07LS458B"] }
      },
      {
        "id": "amanda",
        "groupChat": { "subteamMentions": ["S0B07LS458B"] }
      }
    ]
  }
}

…or globally:

{ "messages": { "groupChat": { "subteamMentions": ["S0B07LS458B"] } } }

Notes / caveats

• groupChat.subteamMentions is resolved with presence-as-override semantics (an explicit empty list on an agent opts that agent out, even when a global list is set). This matches the existing mentionPatterns resolution behavior.
• IDs are normalized to uppercase before comparison so s0b07ls458b and S0B07LS458B match.
• No new permissions or scopes required.
• Test file: extensions/slack/src/monitor/message-handler/subteam-mentions.test.ts.

Acceptance

• <!subteam^SXXX> matching its agent's allowlist produces wasMentioned=true and clears requireMention gates.
• Subteams not in the allowlist behave as today (silent).
• Per-agent allowlist shadows the global list.
• No new Slack OAuth scopes.
• Unit tests cover the helper.

Reported / debugged by: <@U03Q05S3QAY> Davin Casely (#cg-intelligence-agents, 2026-04-28).