BYOA (Bring Your Own Agent) to Slack.

Based on the Vercel Slackbot Agent Guide, adapted for Val Town.

This template uses Claude Sonnet 4.6 directly in lib/generate-response.ts, which requires setting an ANTHROPIC_API_KEY environment variable. Alternatively, you could use a gateway to switch between models easily, like the Vercel AI Gateway or the Kilo Gateway.

This agent comes with the following tools:

1. Anthropic web search
2. Val Town MCP server

You should of course edit and add your own tools! That's the whole point of BYOA :)

duck/
├── events.ts         # HTTP entry point (Hono app, Slack event router)
├── prompt.md         # System prompt for your agent
├── README.md
└── lib/
    ├── generate-response.ts         # AI core (Claude + MCP + web search)
    ├── handle-app-mention.ts        # Handles @mentions in channels and threads
    ├── handle-message.ts            # Handles DMs in assistant (Slack app) threads
    ├── handle-thread-started.ts     # Greeting + suggested prompts on new assistant thread
    └── slack-utils.ts               # Slack client and utils

This val uses pinned imports (latest package version as of 2/19/26) to avoid breaking changes:

1. @slack/web-api@7.14.1
2. hono@4.12.0
3. ai@6.0.92
4. @ai-sdk/anthropic@3.0.45
5. @ai-sdk/mcp@1.0.21

It's "duck" as in rubber duck debugging. But you can call your agent whatever you'd like!