By the end of this page Chickpea is running in your Cloudflare account, installed in your Slack workspace, and has answered a message in a thread. Nothing you configure here needs an API key.
Prerequisites
- A Cloudflare account on Workers Paid. The current bundle’s compressed upload is larger than the Free plan’s 3 MiB Worker limit. Workers, Durable Objects, D1, and Workers AI run in your account and may incur costs on it.
- A Slack workspace where Slack lets you install apps. Slack’s own app policy decides who may install. Chickpea does not require you to hold Slack’s Owner or Admin role.
- Your own browser session. The setup link is private, lasts 24 hours, and is bound to this one deployment. Keep it in one tab.
Agent handles (@support and the like) need a paid Slack plan and a workspace policy that lets members create user groups. You do not need either for the first reply; the Agent that answers first is @Chickpea, the app itself.
Steps
Deploy
Open Deploy to Cloudflare and sign in to Cloudflare. Cloudflare clones the repository into your account, creates the Worker with its Durable Objects, the AUTH_DB D1 database, and the Workers AI binding, then runs Chickpea’s guarded deploy script.
The form asks for no Chickpea secrets. Every provider key is optional and can be added later.
Copy the private setup link
When the deploy finishes, the build log ends with a block headed PRIVATE SETUP LINK. Copy the whole URL, including the part after #. It looks like this:
https://chickpea.<your-account>.workers.dev/admin/setup#setup=<capability>The link expires 24 hours after the deploy. If it has expired, redeploy to mint a new one.
Open the link and choose Add to Slack
The setup page offers two Slack lanes. Choose Add to Slack. It installs Chickpea’s shared, unlisted Slack app through a private gateway, so you paste no configuration token, client secret, signing secret, or bot token.
The other lane, Use your own Slack app, creates a separate app in your workspace from Chickpea’s reviewed manifest. Pick it only if policy requires an app you own; it takes a few more minutes.
Install in Slack and become the first Owner
Slack shows the requested bot permissions. Choose the workspace, review, and select Allow. If your workspace requires app approval, request it and return to the same setup page after approval.
Back on the setup page, select Become the first Owner with Slack. This is Sign in with Slack for the same workspace. The person who signs in becomes Chickpea’s first Owner. There is no password.
Choose a provider and a model
The wizard now asks for a model provider. The default is Cloudflare Workers AI through the Worker’s own binding, which needs no key; the workspace default model is seeded with cloudflare/@cf/zai-org/glm-4.7-flash, a model Workers AI serves on the Workers Free plan. To use Anthropic, OpenAI, or OpenRouter instead, paste that provider’s API key here or add it later under Settings → Model providers.
Pick a model from the list and continue.
Meet Chickpea in Slack
In Slack, open a direct message with Chickpea and ask it for a first teammate. The wizard suggests the message Hi Chickpea. I'm on the marketing team. What's a good first teammate for us?; swap in your own team before you send it. Chickpea answers with three starters that work on day one, and replying with a number creates that Agent. A message that mentions @Chickpea in a channel it has joined counts as well. The setup page waits for the reply.
You should see
A reply from Chickpea, posted under its own name and avatar, in the DM or in a thread under your channel message. The setup page detects the delivered reply and marks setup complete. A real reply is the proof; nothing earlier counts.
What just happened: Slack delivered your mention to your Worker, which routed it to the Chickpea Agent, ran it on the model you chose, and posted the answer back as that Agent.
Next step
- How Chickpea works: what happened between the mention and the reply, and the layers underneath.