AppDev Onboarding Bot

An interactive Slack onboarding bot for Cornell AppDev that guides new members through setup, team intros, and repo onboarding.

Features

• Smart Conversation Flow: Natural language extraction of app, team, and experience level
• Technical Onboarding: Step-by-step setup guides for Android, iOS, Backend, and Frontend teams
• Experience-Aware: Tailored instructions for beginners, intermediate, and experienced developers
• GitHub Integration: Automatic README fetching from Cornell AppDev repos
• AI-Powered: Gemini-based summarization and follow-up question handling
• Caching: Smart caching for faster responses and reduced API calls
• Built with: FastAPI + Slack Bolt for Python + Google Gemini AI

Tech Stack

• Backend: FastAPI, Uvicorn
• Slack SDK: Bolt for Python
• AI: Google Gemini 2.5 Flash
• GitHub: REST API for README fetching
• Local Tunnel: ngrok
• Env Mgmt: python-dotenv

Setup

git clone https://github.com/<your-username>/appdev-onboarding-bot.git
cd appdev-onboarding-bot
python3 -m venv venv && source venv/bin/activate
pip install -r requirements.txt

Create .env

SLACK_BOT_TOKEN=xoxb-your-bot-token
SLACK_SIGNING_SECRET=your-signing-secret
GEMINI_API_KEY=your-gemini-api-key
GITHUB_TOKEN=your-github-token  # Optional, for higher API rate limits

Run locally

# Start the FastAPI server
uvicorn main:api --reload --port 3000

# In another terminal, start ngrok
ngrok http 3000

# Update your Slack app's Event Subscriptions URL to:
# https://your-ngrok-url.ngrok.io/slack/events

Usage

Quick Onboarding

Users can provide all information at once:

"onboard me to Resell Backend as a new developer"
"help me start with Eatery iOS, I'm experienced"

Step-by-Step Onboarding

Or follow the guided conversation:

User: onboard me
Bot: Which AppDev project are you joining?

User: Resell
Bot: Which team are you on? (Android, iOS, Backend, Frontend, Design, Marketing)

User: Backend
Bot: Are you new to Backend development, or do you have experience?

User: I'm new
Bot: [Delivers personalized setup guide]

Follow-up Questions

After onboarding, ask questions about the codebase:

"What environment variables do I need?"
"How do I run the server?"
"Where's the Figma link?"

See CONVERSATION_FLOW.md for detailed conversation examples.

Project Structure

├── main.py                  # FastAPI + Slack Bolt integration
├── github_utils.py          # GitHub README fetching with caching
├── summarize_repo.py        # Gemini-powered summarization
├── conversation.py          # (Optional) Advanced conversation planner
├── summaries_cache.json     # Cached AI summaries
├── repo_cache.json          # Cached repo mappings
└── CONVERSATION_FLOW.md     # Detailed conversation flow documentation