The latest articles on DEV Community by Egor (@xslnx). https://dev.to/xslnx https://media2.dev.to/dynamic/image/width=90,height=90,fit=cover,gravity=auto,format=auto/https:%2F%2Fdev-to-uploads.s3.us-east-2.amazonaws.com%2Fuploads%2Fuser%2Fprofile_image%2F4207262%2F7a0c5883-3fde-474f-a106-8bc3bb25350d.png https://dev.to/xslnx en Egor Sun, 25 Oct 2026 19:43:08 +0000 https://dev.to/xslnx/how-i-used-slacks-canvas-api-to-stop-losing-my-meeting-notes-44nh https://dev.to/xslnx/how-i-used-slacks-canvas-api-to-stop-losing-my-meeting-notes-44nh <p>My notes for upcoming meetings used to live in three different places: Slack reminders, DMs to myself, and a txt file on my laptop. I never found the right one before a meeting started.</p> <p>So I built <a href="https://notes.tappuccino.dev/" rel="noopener noreferrer">Meeting Notes</a>, a Slack bot that gives each meeting (or recurring series) its own private canvas, synced with Google Calendar.</p> <h2> What it does </h2> <ul> <li>A Home tab lists your meetings for the next 7 days</li> <li>Each meeting gets a private Slack canvas only you can see</li> <li>A recurring meeting keeps <em>one</em> canvas: a new section per date, newest on top, so the whole history with that person or team is in one place</li> <li>Templates (built-in or your own) pre-fill every new section automatically</li> <li>An optional DM reminds you a few minutes before a meeting, linking straight to its notes</li> <li>Read-only Google Calendar sync keeps dates up to date on their own</li> </ul> <h2> A couple of things I learned building it </h2> <p>Slack Canvas's API has an <code>insert_at_start</code> edit operation, which is exactly what you want for "newest on top": each new date section gets inserted above the existing ones in one call, no need to read the whole document and rewrite it.</p> <p>Canvases are created with the <em>user's own</em> OAuth token, not the bot's — that's what makes them private to just that person, since the bot token alone can't see them.</p> <h2> Stack </h2> <p>TypeScript, Slack's Bolt framework, SQLite (<code>node:sqlite</code>), Google Calendar API, hosted on Railway.</p> <h2> Caveat </h2> <p>It's built on Slack canvases, which only exist on paid Slack plans — free workspaces can't use it.</p> <p>This is launch week for me, no users outside my own testing yet. Would love feedback, especially anything confusing in the install flow or the Home tab: <a href="https://notes.tappuccino.dev/" rel="noopener noreferrer">https://notes.tappuccino.dev/</a></p> api productivity sideprojects tools