Slack Agents on Vercel with the AI SDK
Step-by-step course to build, deploy, and run a real Slack bot on Vercel using the AI SDK, with logging, safeguards, and an ops runbook for your team’s workspace.
Build and Ship a Production Slack Agent with Bolt, Nitro, and the AI SDK
Demo bots impress nobody. This course is about the Slack agent that’s still answering at 3am: from a fresh clone of the Slack Agent template to a deployed bot on Vercel that survives rate limits and API failures without leaving you blind.
Slack is where your team already works; dropping a reliable agent into those channels beats spinning up yet another web UI. In 6–10 focused hours you’ll walk the full loop—Bolt + Nitro wiring, AI SDK orchestration, and ops (logs, SLOs, runbook)—as one system instead of a pile of disconnected features.
Outcome
You'll ship a Slack agent that can run in a real workspace, not just a demo channel—complete with error handling and retries, structured logs with correlation IDs, minimal OAuth scopes, AI orchestration via the AI SDK, and a runbook + SLOs so someone else can keep it alive.
What You'll Learn
- Foundation & Architecture: Sandbox setup, Nitro + Bolt wiring, VercelReceiver-based HTTP events, and correlation middleware as the backbone for all logs.
- Interaction Surfaces: Slash commands, shortcuts, modals, and App Home, all built around the 3-second ack rule and correlation-aware logging.
- AI Orchestration: System prompts, tools with Zod schemas, streaming with status updates, and retry/fallback logic using the AI SDK.
- Production Operations: Vercel deployment, minimal scopes, structured logs with SLOs, and an operations runbook you actually test.
Course Sections
- 01 – Orientation, Setup & First Run: Clone template, configure manifest, and get your bot responding to mentions.
- 02 – Slack Apps with Bolt: Manifest-driven dev, scopes, event subscriptions, and middleware with correlation logging.
- 03 – Interaction Surfaces: Slash commands, shortcuts, modals, views, and App Home, all with proper ack semantics.
- 04 – AI Orchestration & Tools: System prompts, tools, streaming, retries, and graceful degradation using the AI SDK.
- 05 – Deployment & Operations: Deploy to Vercel, trim scopes, add structured logs, and build a tested runbook with SLOs.
- 06 – Course Complete: Review what you shipped and pick concrete next steps.
How to Work Through This Course
- Flow: Use the Fast Track in each lesson, verify behavior in “Try It”, then commit with the suggested message.
- Path: New to Slack/Bolt? Start at 01–02. Already comfortable? Jump into 03+ and focus on 04–05 for AI + ops patterns.
- What “Done” Looks Like: Bot responds within 3 seconds, commands don’t timeout, logs always include correlation IDs, deployment passes URL verification, and your runbook lets someone else operate the bot.
- Time: Expect ~6–8 hours for the core path, up to ~12 hours if you also tackle the advanced/SideQuest material.