Vercel Eve: Two Files and One Command to a Production-Ready AI Agent

TL;DR: Vercel Eve (June 17) makes a production AI agent a two-file directory: tools are .ts, skills are .md, channels adapt it to Slack/GitHub/Discord — infra included.

Guillermo Rauch describes Eve as "the Next.js for agents": the same way Next.js eliminated the wiring for routing, SSR, and bundling, Eve eliminates the wiring for durable execution, sandboxed compute, human approval gates, and multi-channel deployment.

The minimum runnable agent is two files:

my-agent/
├── agent.ts           # model config: which model, effort, max_tokens
└── instructions.md    # system prompt — just English

Add capabilities by adding files — no registration, no framework config:

tools/        # search.ts, db.ts → each filename becomes a callable tool
skills/       # debugging.md, style.md → loaded when relevant, not always
channels/     # slack.ts, github.ts, discord.ts → same agent, multiple surfaces
schedules/    # cron.ts → agent fires on schedule
subagents/    # triage-agent/ → delegate bounded tasks with their own context

Getting started in under a minute:

npx eve@latest init my-agent
cd my-agent && eve dev     # local dev server with streaming traces + interactive TUI
vercel deploy              # production on Vercel Functions

Eve sandboxes automatically swap from Docker locally to Vercel Sandbox in production — no code changes required. Channel adapters mean the same instructions.md and tools/ serve Slack, Discord, Teams, GitHub, and a plain HTTP API without duplication.

What's built in without configuration: durable execution (sessions checkpoint across crashes and restarts), sandboxed compute, human-in-the-loop approval gates (set requireApproval: true on any tool), OpenTelemetry tracing, and an eval test suite (eve eval).

The Claude Code angle: Eve works with any model provider, including Claude via the Anthropic SDK or MCP. For a team that ships with Claude Code but wants to expose a workflow as a Slack command or scheduled webhook, Eve handles the production infrastructure — you own the logic in tools/ and instructions.md.

Sources: Introducing eve — Vercel, eve changelog — Vercel, The Register: Vercel debuts eve