Connect Telegram

Telegram is the easiest first channel to add to your assistant. It's free, it takes about five minutes, and it gives your assistant its own separate identity: a bot. (A bot is just an automated account you chat with like any other contact.) Your assistant gets its own name, its own @username, and its own profile, kept entirely apart from your personal Telegram.

This guide walks you through three short steps: create the bot, decide who can talk to it, and approve your first conversation.

What you'll need

• The Telegram app on your phone or desktop, signed in to your account.
• An assistant you've already created in HolaClaw, up and running.
• About five minutes.

Channels are set up per assistant, after the assistant exists. Open the assistant you want to put on Telegram, then go to its Channels tab. The page is headed "Where {name} listens." Under Available, find the Telegram card and click Connect to start the walkthrough.

Step 1 — Create your bot with BotFather

Telegram bots are created by a bot — BotFather, Telegram's official bot for making bots. HolaClaw walks you through it.

1. In the Telegram setup screen, click Open BotFather. Telegram opens a chat with BotFather.
2. Send the message /newbot.
3. BotFather asks for a display name — what people see at the top of the chat. Pick anything, like "Mara's Helper."
4. Next it asks for a username — a unique handle that must end in "bot," like mara_helper_bot. If it's taken, BotFather tells you; just try another.
5. BotFather replies with a token — a long secret code shaped like 123456789:ABCdefGHI.... The token is what lets HolaClaw act as your bot, so treat it like a password and don't share it.
6. Copy the token, switch back to HolaClaw, and paste it into the token field. It's masked like a password, with a reveal toggle if you want to double-check it.

HolaClaw checks the token live against Telegram as you paste. If the format looks off, you'll see: "Telegram bot tokens look like 123456789:ABCdef... — check for accidental spaces." Almost always that means a stray space crept in on the copy.

Tip — keep the BotFather chat handy. It's where you'd later change your bot's name, description, or profile picture. You won't need the token again unless you reconnect.

Step 2 — Decide who can talk to your bot

A bot, once it exists, can be found by anyone who knows its @username. So before going live, you choose a policy for who's actually allowed to chat. HolaClaw gives you three:

• Pairing code (recommended). "Users send /start to your bot and receive a one-time pairing code. You review and approve each request before they can chat." Nobody gets in until you say so, one person at a time. Best for personal assistants and small teams.
• Open — anyone can message. No approval step: anyone who finds your bot can start chatting with it immediately. Only choose this for a bot you've genuinely built and tested for the public — most personal assistants aren't ready for strangers, and you'd be spending your AI credits on whoever wanders in.
• Closed — invite only. Only Telegram accounts you've pre-approved can talk to the bot, and there's no self-serve pairing at all. You add people by hand from the channel's settings. This gives you the most control.

Which should you pick? For almost everyone, Pairing code. You stay in charge of who joins, but you don't have to chase down anyone's account ID in advance — they ask, you tap Approve. You can always tighten or loosen this later from the channel page.

Step 3 — Go live and approve yourself

With Pairing code selected, finish the setup and let the channel come online. Then pair yourself so you can start chatting:

1. Open Telegram and find your new bot by its @username (the handle ending in "bot").
2. Send it /start.
3. The request appears back in HolaClaw, on the channel page, showing a one-time code.
4. Click Approve. You'll see a success pill: "Your first pairing approved! You're ready to chat."

That's it — message your bot in Telegram and your assistant replies.

If you'd rather pair later, there's a Skip for now option. Approvals always wait for you on the channel page, so nothing is lost if you come back to it.

Managing who's allowed

The channel's detail page is your control center. It shows your bot's profile — its @username and avatar — any pending approvals waiting on you, and an Allowed users (DM) panel listing everyone who can message the assistant directly.

You can add people to that list manually, by numeric Telegram ID, by @username, or by group link. To let your assistant work inside a group chat, add the bot to the group in Telegram first, then add the group here. Memory is shared across everywhere your assistant listens, so a detail it learns in a Telegram DM is there when you chat in the app too.

Heads-up — your assistant keeps running with the window closed. Once a channel is live, the assistant serves Telegram in the background even after you hide the HolaClaw window. You don't need to keep the app in front of you to stay reachable.

Troubleshooting

• The token is rejected. If you see "Telegram bot tokens look like 123456789:ABCdef... — check for accidental spaces," recopy the token straight from BotFather — a leading or trailing space is the usual culprit.
• The channel won't come online. If setup stalls, you'll see: "Channel didn't come online within 30 seconds. The token may be invalid, or the VM may be slow — try again." Click Try Again first. If it keeps stalling, your assistant's private VM may need a nudge — see Restart the OpenClaw gateway.
• The pairing doesn't go through. If you sent /start but nothing appeared, you may hit "The bot didn't respond within 30 seconds…". Make sure the channel finished coming online, then send /start again.

Still stuck? The HolaClaw Discord is a friendly place to ask.

Next steps

More channels are on the way — WhatsApp support is coming soon, and it'll run alongside Telegram on the same assistant with shared memory.

For the full list of channels and what each one does, head back to Configuration.