[phoenixbox]

Its actually the reply handler provided within Hapi, which lets you reply to the request.

For error handling, instructive messages and private messages we use the reply handler to push messages back to the user in the slack channel, visible only to them. Its super handy to cut down on "noise" in the channel but you do lose the rich formatting options in messages.

If the request is coming from the #general channel then that would work, alternatively you would have to build up a separate request using superagent or something