vercel/eve

What is eve?

eve is an open‑source, filesystem‑first framework for building durable AI agents—software that can run continuously, keep state, and interact with tools, schedules, and chat channels. It is published by Vercel and distributed as the eve npm package.

How does it work?

File‑system as the authoring surface – An agent lives in a regular directory with a prescribed layout:
- agent/instructions.md – the permanent system prompt that defines the agent’s personality and goals.
- agent/tools/ – TypeScript files that expose typed functions the model can call (e.g., a weather lookup).
- agent/skills/ – Markdown‑based procedures that can be loaded on demand.
- agent/channels/ – Connectors for HTTP, Slack, Discord, or Vercel Web Chat.
- agent/schedules/ – Cron‑style jobs that run automatically.
- Optional agent/agent.ts to configure the model (provider, version, reasoning level).
CLI scaffolding – npx eve@latest init <folder> creates the whole structure, installs dependencies, and launches an interactive terminal UI.
Model selection – You point the agent at any model supported by Vercel’s AI Gateway (e.g., openai/gpt-6-luna-fast). The CLI lets you set a specific reasoning tier (high, medium, low).
Run & iterate – npm run dev starts the agent locally. The framework watches the filesystem, so editing a tool or prompt instantly changes the agent’s behaviour.
Deploy & share – npx eve link connects the project to a Vercel account, npx eve add channel/web adds a Web‑Chat UI, and npx eve deploy publishes a live endpoint.

Who might use it?

Audience	Why it fits
Developers building AI assistants who want a clear, version‑controlled way to store prompts, tools, and schedules.
Product teams that need to ship a chat‑based AI feature quickly and keep the codebase in the same repo as the rest of their app.
Researchers / hobbyists exploring multi‑tool agents without wiring up custom serverless back‑ends.
Ops / DevOps who like the idea of a durable agent that can be deployed, monitored, and updated via normal CI/CD pipelines.

How mature is it?

Beta release – The README states that eve is in public beta; APIs and behaviour may still change.
Backed by Vercel – Hosted on npm, with a Vercel‑styled badge and a dedicated community on GitHub Discussions.
Documentation – Full docs are bundled with the package (node_modules/eve/docs) and also published at https://eve.dev.
Open source – The repository includes contribution guidelines, a code of conduct, and a security policy, indicating a typical open‑source project lifecycle.

Quick start recap (from the README)

# Scaffold a new agent
npx eve@latest init my-agent

# Edit the prompt
vim my-agent/agent/instructions.md

# Add a mock tool (example shown in README)
# Run locally
npm run dev

# Add a web chat UI and deploy
npx eve link
npx eve add channel/web
npx eve deploy

Where to learn more?

Official docs: https://eve.dev/docs – covers the full project layout, tutorials, and channel integrations.
First‑agent tutorial: https://eve.dev/docs/tutorial/first-agent – step‑by‑step guide for a minimal weather demo.
Community: GitHub Discussions (https://github.com/vercel/eve/discussions) for Q&A and showcases.

TL;DR

eve gives you a conventional folder structure to write prompts, tools, and schedules for an AI agent, lets you run it locally with npm run dev, and provides Vercel‑integrated commands to add chat channels and deploy the agent as a web service. It’s a genuine, Vercel‑backed framework for building production‑ready AI agents.