CENode (Controlled English Node - http://cenode.io) is a lightweight natural language knowledge-based system implemented using JavaScript, designed to run effectively in a wide variety of contexts, from servers to mobile devices and Internet ???things???. CENode-based apps interact with users in natural language using a conversational protocol that allows people to input queries and pieces of information (ask and tell); the apps can also ask and tell the user things. Example CENode-based apps include Moira (Mobile Information Reporting Agent) for obtaining ???on the spot??? reports (e.g. from people on patrol) and SHERLOCK (Simple Human Experiment Regarding Locally Observed Collective Knowledge) for crowdsourcing knowledge bases.

Slackbot is a simple chatbot built into the Slack team collaboration environment (http://slack.com) which can offer basic help and advice to Slack users. The goal of this project is to integrate CENode with Slack via the Slack APIs (http://api.slack.com) so that Slack teams can benefit from conversational interaction with a natural language knowledge base. For example, the knowledge base could be used as a repository of project information (issues, lessons learned, metadata about documents) or to provide access to external SHERLOCK-style crowdsourcing services.