openab

OpenAB, short for Open Agent Broker, is a tool written in Rust that connects chat platforms like Discord and Slack to AI coding assistants that run on your own computer or server. Instead of building a separate integration for every coding tool, it speaks a shared protocol called the Agent Client Protocol, or ACP, so it can plug into several different coding assistants, including Claude Code, Codex, Gemini, OpenCode and others, just by changing a setting.

The basic idea is simple: someone mentions the bot in a Discord or Slack channel, OpenAB starts a coding assistant process behind the scenes, and the conversation continues in a thread without needing to mention the bot again for follow up messages. Messages stream back to the chat as they are generated, and the bot uses emoji reactions to show its current status, such as thinking, working or done. Other platforms, including Telegram, LINE, Feishu, Google Chat and WeCom, are supported through a separate add on called the Custom Gateway.

Additional features include support for multiple bots talking to each other for coordinated tasks, sending and receiving images and files through chat, scheduled messages driven by cron style jobs, built in slash commands, and voice message transcription using services like Groq, OpenAI or a local Whisper server. It is designed to run well on Kubernetes, with a Dockerfile and Helm chart provided, and it keeps a pool of one coding assistant process per conversation thread.

Getting started involves creating a bot in the Discord Developer Portal or Slack, enabling the right permissions, and then installing OpenAB with Helm, passing in bot tokens and allowed channel IDs. After installing, a one time authentication step connects the coding assistant to your account. The project is released under the MIT license.