Val Town Documentation

Vals

• Overview: Learn about the basics of Vals
• Branches: Val Branches are used for feature development, testing, and sharing
• Cron: Schedules let code on Val Town run every day, every hour, or whenever you'd like
• Email: A kind of val that is able to receive emails sent to it.
• History: View a val's history and revert when needed
• HTTP: A kind of val that can serve a website or an API using web-standard Request & Response objects.
• Basic examples: Examples of basic HTTP triggers for common use cases
• CDNs and Cache Control: How to use Content Delivery Networks (CDNs) and cache control headers with HTTP vals
• Custom domains: Point your own domains to any HTTP val
• Custom subdomains: Choose custom subdomains of val.run for HTTP vals in projects
• Early Return: How to return a response early from an HTTP trigger
• HTML & JSX: You can use JSX syntax in Val Town to render HTML using React, Preact, Vue, Solid, etc.
• Routing: How to implement routing within HTTP triggers to handle different paths and methods
• Val Limitations: Learn about the limitations of vals
• Organizations: Collaborate with your team
• Pull Requests: Pull Requests are used to merge changes from a branch or remix back into the parent
• Remixes: Other users can remix your Val, and you can remix other user's Vals.

Guides

• Store data in Airtable: You can use Airtable with Val Town to store data or load edited data from other sources
• Auth: Add authentication and users to your Val Town app
• Browserbase: How to use Browserbase & Puppeteer to with Val Town
• Browserless: How to use Browserless to scrape websites with Val Town
• Kernel: How to use Kernel with Val Town
• Steel: How to use Steel & Puppeteer to with Val Town
• Creating a webhook: Use Val Town to receive HTTP webhooks from services like Discord or Stripe
• Neon Postgres: How to integrate with Neon, a hosted Postgres platform that does horizontal scaling and includes an SQL-over-HTTP API.
• PlanetScale: How to store data in PlanetScale, a hosted MySQL platform with the ability to scale beyond a single instance and evolve schemas.
• Prisma Postgres: How to connect Val Town to Prisma Postgres, a serverless Postgres database with instant provisioning and zero setup.
• Supabase: How to connect Val Town to Supabase, a hosted Postgres-as-a-platform that lets you make queries via HTTP.
• Upstash: Using Upstash, a hosting provider that provides free 1MB Redis instances.
• Discord welcome bot: Create a Discord bot that sends a DM to new users.
• Discord bot: How to make a Discord bot hosted 24/7 for free in 6 steps
• Send Discord message via webhook: Shows you how to receive webhooks from Discord on Val Town.
• Embedding Vals in other sites: Any val can be embedded as an iframe on other sites
• Your first scheduled cron: Make your first cron job - a weather notifier
• Your first website: Make your personal website
• Generate PDFs: Using jsPDF, you can generate PDFs from scratch and download them from Val Town.
• Get a Github user: Get a user without passing an authentication token on Val Town.
• Github user's stars (pagination): Get a user's stars across all their repositories on GitHub
• Receiving a GitHub Webhook: Send yourself an email / Slack / Discord notification when someone stars your GitHub repository
• Send & receive Gmail: How to use Gmail with Val Town
• Store data in a Google Sheet: Using the Google Sheets API, you can add rows to a spreadsheet with Val Town.
• In, Val, Out: Manage input (like user signups) and automate output (e.g., Slack messages)
• Interop with Node, Deno, and Browsers: Learn how to run your vals in different runtimes
• Social listening with Octolens: Track company mentions on X, Reddit, LinkedIn, etc.
• Overview: A guide to using AI inside and outside Val Town
• ChatGPT: Bring Val Town to ChatGPT
• Claude (Desktop): Bring Val Town to Claude
• Claude Code: Bring Val Town to Claude Code with the Val Town MCP server
• vt CLI: A guide to using the Val Town CLI with your favorite AI tool
• Cursor: Bring Val Town to Cursor with the vt CLI
• GitHub Copilot: Bring Val Town to GitHub Copilot with the vt CLI
• MCP: A guide to using the Val Town MCP server
• Codex: Bring Val Town to OpenAI Codex with the vt CLI or MCP
• Plugin: Use Val Town with coding agents
• Townie: Townie, the Val Town coding agent
• Warp: Bring Val Town to Warp with the vt CLI
• Windsurf: Bring Val Town to Windsurf with the vt CLI
• Zed: Bring Val Town to Zed with the vt CLI
• Push notifications: Using the third-party service ntfy.sh, you can send push notifications to phones and computer with Val Town.
• QR Code: Val Town can be used as a way to generate QR Codes.
• RSS: Val Town can both parse and generate RSS feeds for blogs and other updated sources
• Store data in AWS S3: S3 is Amazon's very popular object storage system. You can upload & download objects on S3 using Val Town.
• Save HTML form data: Save HTML form data on Val Town
• Saving data from a web page: Save data from a web page on Val Town
• Slack agent: BYOA (Bring Your Own Agent) to Slack
• Slack bot: Create interactive Slack bots that respond to mentions, slash commands, and user interactions
• Sending Slack messages: Send notifications and alerts to Slack channels from Val Town
• SQLite wasm: Using Deno's ability to load WASM modules, you can actually run SQLite right in Val Town.
• Stripe webhooks: Accept payments in Val Town using Stripe
• Supabase webhooks: Handle Supabase webhooks in Val Town
• Telegram bot: Create a Telegram bot that can receive and respond to messages on Val Town
• Weather: Build weather related apps with Val Town
• Web scraping: Use Val Town to write a web scraper to extract content from websites
• Website Uptime Tracker

Reference

• Overview: Val Town's REST API allows you to programmatically manage your account and its resources - vals, blob storage, sqlite databases, likes, comments, and more.
• Authentication: How to authenticate to Val Town using API Tokens
• JavaScript SDK: Interact with Val Town via the TypeScript SDK to programmatically create and update vals, get user information, and much more.
• Deno LSP: Understanding the Val Town language server
• Environment groups: Share environment variables in organizations
• Environment variables: Using environment variables to store secrets that vals can securely access
• esm.town: Endpoint for getting val source code
• File I/O: How to read and write files in Val Town
• Using images in vals: Hosting images in Val Town and elsewhere
• Importing: Import code from vals, NPM, JSR, and URLs
• Permissions: Vals can be private, unlisted, or public
• Runtime: Val Town uses the Deno runtime to run your code
• Keyboard shortcuts: Keyboard shortcuts for Val Town
• Blob Storage: Store and retrieve binary data with Val Town's blob storage system
• Email: Send emails programmatically from your vals using Val Town's email API
• Proxied fetch: Make HTTP requests to external services using Val Town's proxied fetch
• OpenAI: Integrate with OpenAI's APIs to add AI capabilities to your vals
• SQLite: Val Town SQLite is a lightweight, standard database. Every Val comes with its own private SQLite database that is accessible from any of your vals.
• Admin: Administration panels for the SQLite databases
• Global: Account-scoped SQLite databases
• Migrations: How to manage database schema changes with migrations in Val Town SQLite
• ORMs: Using Object-Relational Mapping libraries with Val Town SQLite
• Usage: How to use Val Town SQLite, with examples.
• Version Control: Every time you save a val it creates a new immutable version in the version history.

Troubleshooting

• Blocked bots: Some bots are blocked across all Vals
• CORS: Understanding Cross-Origin Resource Sharing (CORS) in Val Town
• Exports: Vals with triggers (HTTP, Cron, Email) require at least one export.
• Express to HTTP migration: How to migrate existing vals from the deprecated express type to the HTTP type
• Migrating Deprecated HTTP Vals: Learn how to migrate your HTTP vals to the new runtime
• Permission errors: Vals run in a sandbox that doesn’t permit access to the filesystem, or to execute arbitrary scripts.
• Serialization: Val Town tries to serialize and deserialize as many types as it can, but doing that for all JavaScript is unfortunately very hard
• Upgrade Guide: Safer Val Scopes: How to upgrade your vals for the safer default scopes rolled out to everyone on Feb 11, 2025

Optional

• Discord
• Email
• Blog