Connect your AI agents to Telegram. Deploy Claws as Telegram bots that can respond to messages, handle commands, and bridge conversations with your other tools.

Overview

The Telegram integration lets you deploy your Claw as a Telegram bot that can respond to direct messages, participate in group chats, and handle bot commands. This integration is currently in beta, with core messaging features available and richer capabilities on the roadmap.

Telegram is popular with distributed teams, developer communities, and organizations that need a lightweight, fast messaging platform. If your team communicates on Telegram, this integration means your Claw meets them there instead of requiring everyone to switch to a different tool.

Connection is straightforward: you create a bot through Telegram’s BotFather, paste the bot token into ClawStaff, and your Claw starts receiving messages. The bot token is encrypted and stored securely, and all message processing happens inside an isolated ClawCage container.

What Your Claw Can Do

Respond to direct messages. Users can message your Claw’s Telegram bot directly. The Claw processes the message using your configured AI model and tools, then responds in the same conversation. Each user’s conversation history is maintained for context-aware replies.

Handle bot commands. Register custom commands like /status, /report, or /help that trigger specific Claw behaviors. Commands can accept parameters and return formatted responses.

Monitor group chats. Add your Claw’s bot to a Telegram group and it can monitor the conversation, responding when mentioned or when messages match defined trigger patterns. Group context is maintained so the Claw understands the flow of conversation.

Forward messages. Your Claw can forward relevant messages or summaries from Telegram to other connected tools: sending a Telegram conversation to Slack, creating a task from a Telegram message, or logging important updates to Notion.

Who Can Reach Your Claw

Telegram whitelisting controls who can communicate with your Claw:

By user. Whitelist specific Telegram accounts. Only messages from those users are processed; messages from anyone else are ignored.
By group. Whitelist specific Telegram groups. The Claw only responds in whitelisted group chats.

This works alongside three Claw scoping levels:

Private Claw. Only the creator interacts via DM with the bot. The Claw is a personal Telegram assistant. Example: a personal bot you message to check your calendar, create tasks, or search your documents.

Team Claw. Whitelisted team members share the Claw. It responds only in the team’s Telegram group and only to whitelisted members. Example: a team notification bot in a private Telegram group that only processes messages from verified team accounts.

Organization-wide Claw. Any whitelisted member can interact. The Claw serves as a team-wide notification and query bot. Still whitelisted to known accounts, so random Telegram users who find the bot cannot interact.

How It Works

Create a Telegram bot. Use Telegram’s BotFather to create a new bot and obtain a bot token. This takes about 30 seconds.
Add the token to ClawStaff. In the ClawStaff dashboard, paste your bot token into the Telegram integration configuration. The token is encrypted immediately upon submission.
Configure your Claw. Define which commands the bot should respond to, set trigger patterns for group chats, and configure the AI model and tools your Claw should use.
Deploy to a ClawCage. Your Claw is deployed in an isolated container with the Telegram bot token injected securely. The container connects to Telegram’s Bot API using long polling or webhooks, depending on your configuration.
Bot goes live. Users can find your bot on Telegram by its username and start interacting with it. Group admins can add the bot to group chats where it should be active.

Security

Bot tokens encrypted at rest. Your Telegram bot token is encrypted before storage and only decrypted inside the ClawCage at runtime.
Tenant isolation. Each Claw runs in its own isolated container. Telegram messages from your bot are never accessible to other tenants.
No message retention outside the ClawCage. Messages are processed in memory within the container. ClawStaff does not store the content of Telegram messages on its own infrastructure.
Revoke anytime. Revoke the bot token through BotFather or disconnect the integration from the ClawStaff dashboard.

Cross-Integration Workflows

Even in beta, the Telegram integration supports useful cross-tool workflows:

Telegram to Slack. A team member sends an urgent message to the Telegram bot while away from their desk. The Claw forwards a summary to a designated Slack channel so the rest of the team sees it.
Telegram to task management. A quick message like /task Fix the login redirect bug creates a task in your connected project management tool with the right context.
Alerts to Telegram. Your Claw monitors other integrations (GitHub deployments, server alerts) and sends notifications to a Telegram group chat, giving your team a lightweight notification channel.

Roadmap: Inline query support, rich media handling (images, documents, audio), inline keyboards for interactive responses, and location-based features are planned for future releases.

Telegram AI Agent Integration