CopilotKit ships Channels SDK: put your existing AI agent into Slack and Teams without a rewrite

The team behind the AG-UI protocol just removed the biggest headache in workplace AI: platform plumbing. CopilotKit’s new Channels SDK, published under an MIT license, doesn’t ask you to build a new bot. It takes the agent you already have — model, tools, business logic — and gives it a native home inside Slack and Microsoft Teams. Discord and Google Chat are on the roadmap.

Installation is two packages. The connection to your agent runs over AG-UI, the interaction protocol CopilotKit maintains, so anything that speaks it works: LangGraph, CrewAI, Mastra, Pydantic AI, Google ADK, or a plain HTTP agent you wrote yourself. The architecture is refreshingly clear about who owns what. You run your agent and a Channels listener. CopilotKit Intelligence handles the messy parts — Slack and Teams credentials, platform ingress, delivery, health checks, and reconnects.

Rendering is where the library earns its keep. You author messages once as JSX, and the adapter lowers them into each platform’s native format: Block Kit for Slack, Adaptive Cards for Teams. No text blobs shoved through webhooks. Interactive handlers are bound through an action store, and named component registration means a message posted before a restart can still re-render and fire its handlers — skip registration, and that click degrades to an expired action.

The feature set targets real work, not aimless chat. Generative UI renders interfaces when the task demands it. Human-in-the-loop approval intercepts critical actions before they execute — the OpenTag demo shows this by pausing every Linear and Notion mutation for confirmation. Tools, slash commands, mentions, and a persistence layer with cross-platform transcripts round out the package. Version 0.5.0 is live on npm now, with Slack generally available and Microsoft Teams carrying an early-access gating note in the shipped types.