EveStudioDocs

Connecting Slack

Slack is the most common place people put an Eve agent, and it's the one with the most moving parts. This page walks the whole thing end to end: how it works, the guided setup in Studio, the gotchas, and how to confirm it's live.

The mental model

Slack talks to your agent through a bot, and that bot is a Vercel Connect Slack client. Get this picture straight first and the rest follows.

The bot is team-level: you create it once, install it into your Slack workspace, and reuse it across agents. It's who messages come from, the identity people @mention and see reply.

There are two directions, and they have different requirements:

  • Receiving. Someone @mentions the bot in a channel or DMs it. The agent replies in that same thread automatically. No target needed; the incoming event already says where to answer.
  • Sending proactively. The agent starts the conversation, say a scheduled reminder DM. Here you must give a target: a Slack channel id (C…) that the bot is a member of, or your member id (U…) for a direct message. That target lives in an environment variable, e.g. SLACK_NUDGE_CHANNEL.

The guided setup

In Studio, go to Integrations → Channels → the Slack card → Set up. It's a six-step wizard, starting with a How it works explainer that covers the mental model above. (If you'd rather drive it from the registry, eve add channel/slack installs the same channel and runs Eve's own setup flow.)

1. Bot

Create a new Vercel Connect Slack connector (Create, which runs vercel connect create slack --triggers), or pick an existing one if you've already got a bot you want to reuse. Then Open to authorize: this installs the Eve app into your Slack workspace so the bot actually exists there. The link works once; if it errors, hit Create again for a fresh one.

2. Connect

Attach that bot's triggers to this agent (at /eve/v1/slack), so Slack delivers its events here and not to some other agent. This part is per-agent: the bot is shared, but the wiring that says "send this bot's events to this project" is specific to the agent you're setting up.

3. Channel

Studio writes agent/channels/slack.ts, wired to the bot you chose.

4. Target

Save your Slack member id (U…) or a channel id (C…) to an environment variable so proactive and scheduled messages have somewhere to go. Set it on all environments: Production for the deployed cron, and Development so the Schedules tab's local Test button can deliver.

5. Ship

Deploy. This matters: Slack only reaches the deployed agent, never local dev. Until you deploy, nothing in Slack will reach your agent.

The channel file

The file Studio writes is small. It just points the Slack channel at the connector for your bot:

import { connectSlackCredentials } from "@vercel/connect/eve";
import { slackChannel } from "eve/channels/slack";

export default slackChannel({
  credentials: connectSlackCredentials("slack/my-agent"),
});

And a scheduled DM that sends proactively. The handler reads the target from an env var and hands the prompt to the Slack channel with to(...):

import { defineSchedule } from "eve/schedules";
import slack from "../channels/slack";

export default defineSchedule({
  cron: "0 2 * * 5", // Fri 09:00 Asia/Bangkok (UTC+7) = 02:00 UTC
  async run({ to, waitUntil, appAuth }) {
    const channelId = process.env.SLACK_NUDGE_CHANNEL;
    if (!channelId) return;
    waitUntil(to(slack, { channelId }).send("Remind me to stretch.", { auth: appAuth }));
  },
});

Gotchas

These cost real debugging time. Call them out for yourself before you go hunting.

  • The channel file must reference the exact bot you're DMing. If agent/channels/slack.ts points at a different connector than the one delivering events, Slack events fail signature verification and are dropped silently. The bot looks online but never replies. No error, no log, just nothing.
  • The bot is one identity across every agent it's attached to. Attach the same connector to three agents and they all speak as the same bot. If you don't want agents sharing an identity, give each its own connector.
  • The Channels tab shows the real wiring. It tells you which bot (bot slack/<uid>) a channel uses, and shows a connected to this agent badge: green when the connector is actually attached to this agent's project, versus not attached. Finish setup when it isn't (with a Finish setup button). Trust the badge over your memory of what you set up.
  • There's a Remove channel icon on each row to delete the file. The connector stays attached in Vercel; remove it there if you no longer want it.

Verifying it works

@mention the bot in a channel, or DM it. If it replies, Slack is live. That's the whole test.

One thing that trips people up: asking the agent in Studio chat "are you connected to Slack?" will always say no. That's expected, not a failure. A channel is a transport, not a tool the agent sees during a chat turn; the agent has no way to introspect it from inside a conversation. Test Slack from Slack, not from chat.

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