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8Today, we’re unifying our two primitives — *vals* and *projects* — into a single primitive: the **val**, with the best features of both.
9
10Historically, vals have been simple and lightweight, but limited to a single file. This upgrade will preserve the elegant spirit of our platform while supporting more complex code and collaborative workflows. This upgrade will help you create bigger things on Val Town – APIs, internal tools, fullstack apps, blogs ([like this one](https://www.val.town/x/valdottown/blog)), and much more – without sacrificing the simplicity you've always loved about vals.
11
12*Legacy vals* will temporarily become *projects* during this migration. Post-migration, the concept of *projects* will disappear entirely — leaving only upgraded *vals*. In short: *legacy vals* → *projects* → *vals*.
16For most users, no upgrade action is required. We’ll auto-migrate your vals next week.
17
18For those with mission-critical vals or who use our API to edit or create vals, you can start upgrading your legacy vals today and integrating with our updated API.
19
20- **April 23, 2025** – Announcement of changes & API deprecations.
21- **April 30, 2025** – All remaining *legacy vals* auto-upgraded. Deprecated API routes become read-only.
22- **May 1, 2025** – The term *projects* will no longer exist — everything will simply be a *val*.
23
35[See more details in our docs.](https://docs.val.town/upgrading/legacy-vals)
36
37## API Changes
38
39Today, we're introducing the following API routes:
40
41```bash
71```
72
73View our [updated API reference here](https://docs.val.town/openapi).
74
75We've also released a new major version of the [Val Town SDK](https://github.com/val-town/sdk/tree/main), `v1.0.0`, using these new endpoints.
76
77All `v1/vals` API routes become read-only on **April 30, 2025**. If you rely on *writing* to those routes, please upgrade to our new `v2/vals` API. All deprecated API routes will continue serving historical legacy val data.
78
79## What's next
80
811. Upgrade your mission-critical vals early.
822. Update your Val Town SDK & API usage to `/v2` routes.
833. All remaining legacy vals migrate on **April 30, 2025**.
844. Migration completes on **May 1, 2025**.

82    // if we wanted to create a /lastUpdatedAt route,
83    // which would let us pass a val town bearer token, we could do that here
84    // gives us 10k API requests per minute instead of 1k
85    // and would work with private projects
86

19export const oldPosts: BlogPost[] = [
20  {
21    "title": "Solving the internal / external API riddle",
22    "slug": "api-conundrum",
23    "link": "/blog/api-conundrum",
24    "description": "Figuring out how to provide an API that's usable by everyone and fast for us to iterate on",
25    "pubDate": "Thu, 27 Mar 2025 00:00:00 GMT",
26    "author": "Tom MacWright",
27  },
28  {
29    "title": "API Tokens Scopes",
30    "slug": "api-token-scopes",
31    "link": "/blog/api-token-scopes",
32    "description": "Improving security with granular control over permissions",
33    "pubDate": "Fri, 01 Nov 2024 00:00:00 GMT",
59  },
60  {
61    "title": "Expanding the Vals API - RFC",
62    "slug": "expanding-the-vals-api-rfc",
63    "link": "/blog/expanding-the-vals-api-rfc",
64    "description": "Our REST API lets you do a lot - and soon it will enable more",
65    "pubDate": "Fri, 30 Jun 2023 00:00:00 GMT",
66    "author": "André Terron",
133  },
134  {
135    "title": "The perks of a good OpenAPI spec",
136    "slug": "openapi",
137    "link": "/blog/openapi",
138    "description": "Taking advantage of our typed REST API to build a platform around\nVal Town.",
139    "pubDate": "Thu, 25 Jul 2024 00:00:00 GMT",
140    "author": "Tom MacWright",
262  },
263  {
264    "title": "The API we forgot to name",
265    "slug": "the-api-we-forgot-to-name",
266    "link": "/blog/the-api-we-forgot-to-name",
267    "description": "An API that takes a Request and returns a Response - what was that, again?",
268    "pubDate": "Thu, 19 Oct 2023 00:00:00 GMT",
269    "author": "Steve Krouse",
286  },
287  {
288    "title": "Deprecating the Run API",
289    "slug": "deprecating-the-run-api",
290    "link": "/blog/deprecating-the-run-api",
291    "description": "Not every function should be an API",
292    "pubDate": "Wed, 07 Feb 2024 00:00:00 GMT",
293    "author": "André Terron",
321    "slug": "val-town-newsletter-1",
322    "link": "/blog/val-town-newsletter-1",
323    "description": "Programmatic notifications, Hacker News API, and more.",
324    "pubDate": "Wed, 04 Jan 2023 00:00:00 GMT",
325    "author": "Steve Krouse",
450    "slug": "val-town-newsletter-22",
451    "link": "/blog/val-town-newsletter-22",
452    "description": "Townie upgrades, Scoped API permissions, Fal partnership",
453    "pubDate": "Mon, 02 Dec 2024 00:00:00 GMT",
454    "author": "Steve Krouse",

83We didn't. We left them where they are, and proxy to them.
84
85Writing a proxy in Val Town (or any functions platform with the ['fetch handler' interface](https://blog.val.town/blog/the-api-we-forgot-to-name/)) is a delight:
86
87```ts

31Refer to [Twitter's search operators](https://socialdata.gitbook.io/docs/twitter-tweets/retrieve-search-results-by-keyword#endpoint-parameters) to fine-tune your query.
32
33### 4. Test API call
34Set `isProd = false` in the code if you are testing, to ensure there are enough tweets to display. <br>
35Toggle it back to `true` when you're ready to run this cron job in production and actuall send notifications.
60
61### NOTE: Usage Limits
62This val uses the SocialData API for Twitter data:
63
64- **Proxies via Val Town's [SocialDataProxy](https://www.val.town/v/stevekrouse/socialDataProxy)**: Limited to 10 cents per day for [**Val Town Pro users**](https://www.val.town/pricing). This API is *only* for Pro users.
65- **Need more calls?** Sign up for your own [SocialData API token](https://socialdata.tools) and configure the [`socialDataSearch`](https://www.val.town/v/stevekrouse/socialDataSearch) function.

97
98export async function sendDailyBriefing(chatId?: string, today?: DateTime) {
99  // Get API keys from environment
100  const apiKey = Deno.env.get("ANTHROPIC_API_KEY");
101  const telegramToken = Deno.env.get("TELEGRAM_TOKEN");
102
106  }
107
108  if (!apiKey) {
109    console.error("Anthropic API key is not configured.");
110    return;
111  }
122
123  // Initialize Anthropic client
124  const anthropic = new Anthropic({ apiKey });
125
126  // Initialize Telegram bot
162
163  // disabled title for now, it seemes unnecessary...
164  // await bot.api.sendMessage(chatId, `*${title}*`, { parse_mode: "Markdown" });
165
166  // Then send the main content
169
170  if (content.length <= MAX_LENGTH) {
171    await bot.api.sendMessage(chatId, content, { parse_mode: "Markdown" });
172    // Store the briefing in chat history
173    await storeChatMessage(
198    // Send each chunk as a separate message and store in chat history
199    for (const chunk of chunks) {
200      await bot.api.sendMessage(chatId, chunk, { parse_mode: "Markdown" });
201      // Store each chunk in chat history
202      await storeChatMessage(

53You'll need to set up some environment variables to make it run.
54
55- `ANTHROPIC_API_KEY` for LLM calls
56- You'll need to follow [these instructions](https://docs.val.town/integrations/telegram/) to make a telegram bot, and set `TELEGRAM_TOKEN`. You'll also need to get a `TELEGRAM_CHAT_ID` in order to have the bot remember chat contents.
57- For the Google Calendar integration you'll need `GOOGLE_CALENDAR_ACCOUNT_ID` and `GOOGLE_CALENDAR_CALENDAR_ID`. See [these instuctions](https://www.val.town/v/stevekrouse/pipedream) for details.

8## Hono
9
10This app uses [Hono](https://hono.dev/) as the API framework. You can think of Hono as a replacement for [ExpressJS](https://expressjs.com/) that works in serverless environments like Val Town or Cloudflare Workers. If you come from Python or Ruby, Hono is also a lot like [Flask](https://github.com/pallets/flask) or [Sinatra](https://github.com/sinatra/sinatra), respectively.
11
12## Serving assets to the frontend
20### `index.html`
21
22The most complicated part of this backend API is serving index.html. In this app (like most apps) we serve it at the root, ie `GET /`. 
23
24We *bootstrap* `index.html` with some initial data from the server, so that it gets dynamically injected JSON data without having to make another round-trip request to the server to get that data on the frontend. This is a common pattern for client-side rendered apps.
25
26## CRUD API Routes
27
28This app has two CRUD API routes: for reading and inserting into the messages table. They both speak JSON, which is standard. They import their functions from `/backend/database/queries.ts`. These routes are called from the React app to refresh and update data.
29
30## Errors
31
32Hono and other API frameworks have a habit of swallowing up Errors. We turn off this default behavior by re-throwing errors, because we think most of the time you'll want to see the full stack trace instead of merely "Internal Server Error". You can customize how you want errors to appear.

8import { type Memory } from "../../shared/types.ts";
9
10const API_BASE = "/api/memories";
11const MEMORIES_PER_PAGE = 20;
12
71    setError(null);
72    try {
73      const response = await fetch(API_BASE);
74      if (!response.ok) {
75        throw new Error(`HTTP error! status: ${response.status}`);
100
101    try {
102      const response = await fetch(API_BASE, {
103        method: "POST",
104        headers: { "Content-Type": "application/json" },
123
124    try {
125      const response = await fetch(`${API_BASE}/${id}`, {
126        method: "DELETE",
127      });
155
156    try {
157      const response = await fetch(`${API_BASE}/${editingMemory.id}`, {
158        method: "PUT",
159        headers: { "Content-Type": "application/json" },

18});
19
20// --- API Routes for Memories ---
21
22// GET /api/memories - Retrieve all memories
23app.get("/api/memories", async (c) => {
24  const memories = await getAllMemories();
25  return c.json(memories);
26});
27
28// POST /api/memories - Create a new memory
29app.post("/api/memories", async (c) => {
30  const body = await c.req.json<Omit<Memory, "id">>();
31  if (!body.text) {
36});
37
38// PUT /api/memories/:id - Update an existing memory
39app.put("/api/memories/:id", async (c) => {
40  const id = c.req.param("id");
41  const body = await c.req.json<Partial<Omit<Memory, "id">>>();
58});
59
60// DELETE /api/memories/:id - Delete a memory
61app.delete("/api/memories/:id", async (c) => {
62  const id = c.req.param("id");
63  try {
75// --- Blob Image Serving Routes ---
76
77// GET /api/images/:filename - Serve images from blob storage
78app.get("/api/images/:filename", async (c) => {
79  const filename = c.req.param("filename");
80