TypeClawReference
Telegram bot
Long-polling adapter — bot token setup, capabilities, and limits
Part of the channel adapters family.
Transport: long polling (no public URL required). Setup walkthrough: Add a channel.
Auth
One token, stored in secrets.json:
| Field | Value |
|---|---|
channels.telegram-bot.token | Telegram bot token (from @BotFather) |
CLI: typeclaw channel add telegram-bot (interactive), typeclaw channel set telegram-bot (rotate).
Only one poller per token
Only one process can long-poll a given bot token at a time. Running two instances against the same token causes them to steal updates from each other — messages will be silently dropped.
Capabilities
| Feature | Supported | Notes |
|---|---|---|
| Outbound messages | yes | MarkdownV2 formatting; reserved chars are escaped automatically |
| Reactions | no | |
| Typing indicator | yes | sendChatAction; auto-expires ~5s; no explicit stop |
| Channel-name resolution | yes | |
| Self identity | yes | |
| History | no | channel_history tool will fail for Telegram |
| Attachments | yes | Sent as separate calls; land in chat root even for forum topics (sendDocument ignores message_thread_id); caption shares the 1024-char limit |
| Membership | partial | Bot API can't split bot/human counts; group reports humans = total-1, bots = 1 |
Config
{
"channels": {
"telegram-bot": {
"enabled": true,
"engagement": {
"trigger": ["mention", "reply", "dm"],
"stickiness": { "perReply": { "window": 900000 } }
},
"history": {
"prefetch": {
"thread": { "head": 3, "tail": 10 },
"channel": { "tail": 10 }
}
},
"quotedReply": { "enabled": true, "queueDelayMs": 10000 }
}
}
}All fields above are shared across adapters. No adapter-specific extensions exist for telegram-bot. Credentials live in secrets.json#channels.telegram-bot.