Vercel Connect adds managed Linq connector for iMessage, RCS and SMS

What Vercel shipped

Vercel has added Linq to its Vercel Connect service as a managed connector. According to the company's changelog, the integration lets applications and AI agents exchange messages over iMessage, RCS and SMS through a single connector, with Linq choosing the delivery protocol per recipient: iMessage first, then RCS, then SMS as a fallback.

Because it is a managed connector, Vercel can provision a Linq account and phone number on the developer's behalf, or link an account that already exists. The credentials stay inside the platform rather than being stored in application code or environment variables.

Setup through the dashboard or CLI

Connectors are created from the Vercel dashboard or the CLI. The changelog shows a two-step flow: vc connect create linq --name my-agent creates the connector, and vc connect attach linq/my-agent --project my-app --environment production attaches it to a project's production environment.

A phone number for eve agents

The connector also powers a new Linq channel for eve, Vercel's agent product. Running eve add channel/linq and selecting Vercel Connect wires up the connector, the phone numbers and the webhook automatically, with credentials resolving at runtime through the connectLinqCredentials helper from the Connect SDK.

The channel is conversation-aware. Per the changelog, it flags incoming messages as read and keeps one continuous eve session across the messages in a Linq conversation. Read receipts, typing indicators and mid-conversation steering are supported out of the box, which Vercel says makes the exchange feel closer to a normal text conversation.

Using the connector in any project

Outside of eve, any project can talk to the Linq Partner API through the connector. Calling getToken from the @vercel/connect SDK exchanges the Vercel deployment's OIDC identity for a short-lived Linq token, which is then passed as a bearer token on API requests.

The changelog demonstrates the pattern by posting a text message — a production deployment notification — to Linq's chats endpoint, specifying a sender number, recipient numbers and the message body. The same token reportedly works across the entire Linq API, covering group chats, reactions, rich media and typing indicators.

Why it matters

Messaging has long been an awkward surface for server-side software. iMessage and RCS were built for handsets, not deployments, and managing credentials for third-party messaging providers is a recurring source of leaks, expirations and rotation pain. By folding Linq into the managed connector model, where platform identity is swapped for short-lived vendor tokens, Vercel removes both the secret-handling burden and the protocol-selection problem from the developer's plate.

For agent builders, the move is more pointed. Most agents today live behind web UIs or team chat tools; a session-aware channel over iMessage, RCS and SMS means an eve agent can hold a persistent conversation on the same thread a user already texts. If that pattern catches on, deployment platforms like Vercel become the connective tissue between AI agents and the default messaging apps already installed on every phone.