docs: rebuild onboarding around the CopilotKit channels CLI

[jerelvelarde]

Why

The documented path to a first reply could not work. Both Slack manifests in
this repo set socket_mode_enabled: true with no request_url. Managed
delivery requires Slack to POST events to an Intelligence-hosted Request URL, so
an app created the way the README instructed installs green, reports healthy, and
delivers nothing — forever. That was the recommended path for every new user.

Three more defects sat alongside it:

	Was	Actually
Slack credentials	setup.md asked for an xapp- app-level token	No xapp- exists on this path. The adapter takes a bot token (xoxb-) + signing secret.
Pinned versions	README and setup.md both said 0.7.0 / 1.66.0	package.json says 0.7.3 / 1.66.2 since 674a366
pnpm test on main	assumed green	red — app/cleanup.test.ts was a third copy of 0.7.0

That last one is the same root cause as the second: a version pin restated in
prose and in a test assertion drifts the moment someone bumps deps. Three copies,
three drifts, one of them breaking the build.

What changed

Rather than document around the manifest bug, this removes it structurally.
npx copilotkit@latest channels add generates a Slack manifest already pointed
at the correct Request URL, so the wrong app can no longer be created by
following instructions. That replaces the hand-written "create a project → create
a Channel → issue a key → configure adapters" dashboard walkthrough entirely.

README.md — a five-minute path to a working bot

Ordered so the Channel is created before Slack, because the Channel is what
generates the manifest.

Step 2 offers both paths. channels setup installs the channels-setup skill
and hands the flow to a coding agent; project select + channels add is the
explicit sequence. Two caveats a reader would otherwise hit are called out: the
skill installs to every coding agent it detects with no way to narrow the
list (skills onboard --channels --agent <name> takes the same prompt and does),
and its workflow is written for a project starting from nothing — so it has
phases for building the agent and writing the Channel runtime, which OpenTag
already has. An agent following it literally could rewrite working code.

The quick start ends in the three checks that separate "installed" from
"answering":

1. Mention it → expect a reply.
2. Unmentioned follow-up in that thread → expect a reply (a mention subscribes the thread).
3. Unmentioned message in a fresh conversation → expect silence.

Check 3 is exactly what #29 and #30 were fighting, and no doc asserted it.

Also newly documented, all of it previously tribal knowledge:

• channels status --json as the first debugging step — and which two of its
  warnings are expected for OpenTag, since app/env.ts defaults both
  Intelligence URLs in code rather than in .env.
• LOG_LEVEL=debug. The runtime logger defaults to error while every Channel
  lifecycle breadcrumb logs at warn, so channel "<name>" requires setup — the
  highest-value diagnostic here — is written and discarded by default. Verified
  against 1.66.2: getCommonConfig reads process.env.LOG_LEVEL || "error".
• /invite. Workspace-installed ≠ channel member; Slack emits no app_mention
  at all for a channel the app isn't in, so OpenTag looks broken while behaving correctly.
• Channel names claim deliveries. Two runtimes declaring one name in one
  project race per delivery and the loser is silently starved — the tell is a
  Slack reply your terminal knows nothing about. INTELLIGENCE_CHANNEL_NAME
  defaults to open-tag, the production name, so a fork reusing a key inherits
  that race by default.
• Signals that look like health and aren't: ready() resolves on
  setup_required too, and /api/copilotkit/info returning 200 says nothing
  about Slack.
• That the runtime doesn't hot-reload Channel wiring — a stale process answering
  with old behavior is indistinguishable from a change that didn't work.

setup.md — reference only

Environment contract, Channel CLI reference, optional sources, Railway, tests.
No quick start (that's the README), no pinned version numbers, no xapp-.

One honesty fix: /agent, /triage, /preview, and /file-issue were listed as
features. They're registered in app/channel.tsx, but managed-path delivery
depends on the generated manifest declaring slash_commands, and as of the 0.7.0
verification it declared none and view_submission wasn't handled — so they
compile, start, report online, and never fire. Now marked unverified with an
instruction to test before relying on them, rather than promised.

docs/migration-kite.md — new

The internal @kite cutover moved out of the newcomer path. It's rewritten around
the real constraint: the app must not be recreated, yet its delivery mode must
change, because Socket Mode and a Request URL are mutually exclusive. Credentials
corrected, and the reinstall tension (scopes apply only on reinstall; the signing
secret is reissued by it) is flagged as needing confirmation against the live app
before anyone touches production.

Deletions

slack-app-manifest.{yaml,json} are gone. OpenTag supports only the managed path
— app/index.ts composes an adapter-free Channel and Intelligence owns the
adapters — so these could never work here and existed only to mislead. Their only
remaining references were in archived docs/superpowers/ design records, left as
historical.

app/cleanup.test.ts

Now asserts the pin shape (a bare semver, no range operator) instead of a
literal version. Same guarantee — reproducible deploys — but it can't drift on the
next bump. This is what turns main's red suite green.

.gitignore

copilotkit channels setup writes .agents/, a .claude/skills symlink, a stray
agent/skills/ copy inside the Python package, and skills-lock.json, none of
which were ignored. Now they are, while .copilotkit/channels.json — the Channel
declaration the guide says to track — stays trackable. Verified both directions
with git check-ignore.

Verification

pnpm check-types                            ✓
pnpm test                                   ✓ 162 passed (was 161 passed / 1 failed)
cd agent && uv run pytest                   ✓ 70 passed
node node_modules/railway/dist/iac/bin.js   ✓ "diagnostics": []

Not done, deliberately

• No code change to the Channel-name source of truth. The canonical guide
  says to resolve the name from .copilotkit/channels.json and "do not add a
  second hard-coded or environment-only source of truth" — which is precisely what
  INTELLIGENCE_CHANNEL_NAME defaulting to open-tag is. Fixing it means
  touching app/env.ts and Railway's variables, so it's documented as a footgun
  here and left for its own PR.
• The quick start is written from the canonical guide, not from a transcript.
  Confirming it end to end means creating a real Channel and Slack app; I didn't
  have authorization to create server-side state in an Intelligence project. The
  CLI surface, the credential fields, channels status output, and the
  LOG_LEVEL default were all verified directly against the installed CLI and
  @copilotkit/runtime@1.66.2. Someone should run step 2 once against a
  throwaway project before this is treated as proven.