Spore-bot Automation Stable

What it is. Spore-bot connects your Slack or Microsoft Teams workspace to your running instances.

When to use it. When you (or a collaborator) want to check on or control an instance without opening a terminal or holding AWS credentials — from a phone, a shared channel, or mid-meeting. Also how lifecycle notifications reach you as DMs.

Any team member you've authorised can control instances from chat — without a terminal, without AWS credentials, from any device. Setup lives in the Slack Setup guide; the trust model (cross-account role, per-user access) is in Security, credentials & data flow.

What it does

Slash commands (in any channel):

Command	Action
/spore list	All your registered instances with status
/spore status [name]	State, type, IP, DNS, TTL countdown
/spore start [name]	Start a stopped instance
/spore stop [name]	Stop a running instance
/spore hibernate [name]	Hibernate (save RAM, stop billing)
/spore extend [name] [duration]	Extend the TTL
/spore url [name]	Get the instance URL
/spore connect [duration]	Generate a one-time code for a collaborator
/spore notify [name]	Subscribe to DM notifications
/spore unnotify [name]	Unsubscribe
/spore help	Command reference

Direct message notifications — lifecycle events arrive as DMs without polling:

• ⏱️ training terminates in 10 minutes — time to extend if needed
• ✅ bert-finetune has completed — job done, instance is terminating
• 💤 rstudio has hibernated — idle timeout reached
• ⚠️ training received a Spot interruption notice

How it works

Spore-bot is a Lambda function running in the spore.host infrastructure account. When you type /spore stop rstudio, Slack sends a signed webhook to the Lambda, which:

1. Verifies the Slack signature
2. Looks up your registration in DynamoDB
3. Assumes your cross-account IAM role
4. Calls ec2:StopInstances in your AWS account
5. Responds to Slack with the result

Your AWS credentials never leave your account — the Lambda only assumes the narrow cross-account role you grant it.

Setup

See the full Slack Setup guide for step-by-step instructions. The short version:

1. Create a Slack app at api.slack.com/apps
2. Add the OAuth redirect URL and configure the /spore slash command
3. Connect your workspace: click "Add to Slack" or run spawn notify workspace-add
4. Register instances: spawn notify register --instance i-0abc123 --nickname rstudio
5. Enable access: spawn notify enable --nickname rstudio --user you@lab.edu

Access model

• Per-instance, per-user — you explicitly grant each user access to each instance
• Per-action — control which operations each user can perform (start,stop,status etc.)
• Enabled flag — access can be suspended without revoking the registration
• Cross-account IAM — the Lambda never has broad EC2 access; it can only assume roles you create

Microsoft Teams

Teams works identically to Slack. See Teams Setup.