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Channels

Telegram

Connect your agent to a Telegram bot over long polling β€” no webhook or public IP required. Telegram is the only channel that supports the pairing store for per-user access control.

Requirements

  • A bot token from @BotFather (create a bot with /newbot, copy the token).
  • The python-telegram-bot library (installed with Flowly's Telegram extra).

Configuration

Set under channels.telegram in ~/.flowly/config.json:

{
  "channels": {
    "telegram": {
      "enabled": true,
      "token": "123456:ABC-...",
      "allowFrom": [],
      "dmPolicy": "pairing"
    }
  }
}
KeyTypeDefaultDescription
enabledboolfalseStart the Telegram adapter at gateway boot.
tokenstring""Bot token from @BotFather.
allowFromstring[][]Allowed user IDs or usernames. Empty = allow all (subject to dmPolicy).
dmPolicy"open" | "pairing" | "allowlist""pairing"DM access policy (see below).

DM access policy

  • open β€” anyone who messages the bot is allowed.
  • pairing β€” unknown senders receive an 8-character pairing code and instructions; you approve it from the CLI.
  • allowlist β€” unknown senders are silently blocked; only allowFrom + approved pairing entries are allowed.

The Telegram adapter unions allowFrom with the approved pairing allow-store and matches a sender by ID, username, @username, or telegram:{id}.

Connect method

Long polling via python-telegram-bot. The adapter registers native bot commands and handlers for text, photo, voice, audio, and documents, plus inline-button exec-approval callbacks. On startup it calls Telegram with drop_pending_updates=true, so messages received while the bot was offline are discarded.

Pairing / allowlist

When a sender hits the bot in pairing mode, they get a code. Approve it:

flowly pairing list telegram
flowly pairing approve telegram <CODE> --notify
flowly pairing allowed telegram
flowly pairing revoke telegram <user_id>
Tip

--notify sends an "approved" DM to the user (Telegram only). Codes expire after 1 hour; up to 3 pending requests are kept per channel.

Setup steps

  1. Create a bot in @BotFather and copy the token.
  2. Set channels.telegram.enabled to true and paste the token.
  3. Choose a dmPolicy (pairing is the default).
  4. Start the gateway: flowly gateway.
  5. Message your bot. In pairing mode, run flowly pairing approve telegram <code> with the code it gives you.

Exec-approval prompts are delivered as inline buttons in your Telegram chat β€” see Sandbox & approvals.