krill — build a personal iMessage agent with Kernel + Linq

krill is a tiny AI agent that lives inside your iMessage/SMS thread. Text it like a friend and it texts back — and when it needs to, it drives a real cloud browser to go perform actions and look things up on the internet for you.

It's built on three pieces:

Piece	What it does	How it's wired
eve	The agent framework (instructions, tools, channels)	agent/ folder + withEve
Linq	Gives the agent a real phone line for iMessage/SMS	Vercel Connect connector
Kernel	A live cloud browser the agent can drive	KERNEL_API_KEY env var

The AI model itself runs on Vercel AI Gateway, which is provisioned automatically — there's nothing to set up for it.

---

Prerequisites

Before you start, make sure you have:

• Node.js 24 (node -v should print v24.x)

• pnpm (npm install -g pnpm)

• A Vercel account, with the Vercel CLI installed and logged in — the agent deploys here, and Linq is set up through Vercel Connect, which requires an authenticated CLI:

  npm install -g vercel
  vercel login

  (See the Vercel CLI docs for other install options, e.g. Homebrew.)

• A Linq account with at least one phone number/line

• A Kernel account (for the cloud browser)

---

1. Clone the repo

git clone https://github.com/kernel/eve-imessage-agent.git
cd eve-imessage-agent

---

2. Install

pnpm install

This installs the minimal Next.js app and the eve agent runtime.

---

3. Connect Linq (the iMessage line)

Linq is what gives krill an actual phone number people can text. It's connected through Vercel Connect, so you never paste raw API tokens.

The channel's code (agent/channels/linq.ts) is already committed in this repo, so don't run the plain eve add channel/linq — it tries to write that file again and will refuse, since it already exists, without ever reaching the setup wizard. Instead, run it with --skip-install, which skips the file-write step and only runs the interactive Vercel Connect/Linq setup:

pnpm exec eve add channel/linq --skip-install

This walks you through:

1. Choosing Set up Vercel Connect (it links or creates a Vercel project for you).
2. A "Name your Linq agent" prompt. Type krill-imessage here — don't accept the suggested default. The channel is already defined in agent/channels/linq.ts, hardcoded to the connector UID linq/krill-imessage; the name you enter here becomes that connector's UID (vercel connect create linq --name <name> under the hood), so it has to match exactly or krill won't find its credentials.
3. Choosing which Linq account to use:
   • Create a new Linq account (the default) — Linq provisions a brand new phone number for you; you don't pick one. It isn't written anywhere in the repo — eve prints it once, to the terminal, as a "Text your agent" note at the end of setup, so copy it down before you lose the output. If you misplace it, it's also visible anytime from your Linq dashboard, which lists the number for the account/line you just created.
   • Use an existing Linq account — paste your Linq partner API token and eve lists every phone number already tied to it so you can pick which one(s) krill uses.

eve then configures the connector and the inbound webhook for you.

If you already ran this with a different name, either re-run vercel connect create linq --name krill-imessage to create a matching connector, or update the UID in connectLinqCredentials("linq/krill-imessage") in agent/channels/linq.ts to match the name you used.

---

4. Connect Kernel (the cloud browser)

Kernel gives krill a real browser it can drive to fetch live info from the web. This one uses a simple shared API key so every texter gets the same browser with no per-person login.

1. Grab your API key from the Kernel dashboard.
2. Add it as an environment variable named KERNEL_API_KEY (see the next step for where).

The wiring lives in agent/extensions/kernel.ts — it just reads process.env.KERNEL_API_KEY.

---

5. Set your environment variables

Set this on your Vercel project before you deploy — without it, krill's browser tool fails as soon as anyone texts it something that needs a lookup:

vercel env add KERNEL_API_KEY production

(paste the key from the Kernel dashboard when prompted). This needs a Vercel project already linked — if step 3 didn't set one up for you (e.g. you used portable Linq credentials instead of Vercel Connect) and you haven't run eve deploy yet, run vercel link first. You can also add it from the dashboard instead (Settings → Environment Variables), and for local development, put it in a .env.local file.

Variable	Required?	What it's for
KERNEL_API_KEY	Yes	Your Kernel cloud-browser API key (step 4).

The AI model credential (AI_GATEWAY_API_KEY) is provisioned automatically on Vercel, so you don't need to add it.

Adding or changing an env var after you've already deployed? Redeploy (pnpm exec eve deploy, step 7) for it to take effect — Vercel doesn't inject new env vars into a build that already ran.

Who can text krill?

There's no custom allowlist to configure — krill is personal by construction. Linq only routes messages from conversations tied to the account/line you connected in step 3, so krill only ever hears from people who have that number. Nothing else to set up here.

---

6. Run it locally

pnpm dev

This starts the minimal root Next.js app together with the eve agent. To exercise the agent directly in a local REPL:

pnpm exec eve dev

---

7. Deploy

pnpm exec eve deploy

This links a Vercel project first if you haven't already, then deploys straight to production (pushing to GitHub with the Vercel integration enabled, or running vercel --prod yourself, both work too). Because the project is wrapped with withEve, this deploys the agent — including the /eve/v1/* webhook routes Linq delivers to — alongside the minimal root Next.js app eve needs to build.

Once deployed, text your Linq number and krill will text back.

Changes to the agent (instructions, allowlist, connectors) only take effect on the deployed app — the inbound webhook runs in production, not in local preview.

---

Making krill your own

• Personality & behavior: agent/instructions.md is krill's system prompt. Rewrite it to give your agent any voice you like.
• The model: agent/agent.ts sets the model ID (provider/model form, e.g. anthropic/claude-opus-4.8).
• No landing page: krill's real interface is the phone number, so there's intentionally no marketing/status page in this repo — just the agent and the minimal Next.js shell withEve needs to build and deploy it.

---

Project layout

agent/
├── agent.ts              # model + runtime config
├── instructions.md       # krill's system prompt (voice & behavior)
├── channels/linq.ts      # the iMessage/SMS channel
└── extensions/kernel.ts  # the Kernel cloud-browser credential
app/                      # minimal Next.js root eve needs to build/deploy

---

Learn more

• eve docs: https://eve.dev/docs
• Linq channel guide: https://eve.dev/docs/channels/linq
• Kernel: https://onkernel.com