Telegram¶

What it is¶

The Telegram bot is a human control surface that registers as the telegram peer. Notifications agents send to it appear in your Telegram chat; messages you send route back into the mesh as tracked asks by default.

When to use it¶

Use Telegram when you want phone-side mesh control, agent status updates, sticky routing to one peer, or image/document uploads from your phone.

Use the dashboard when you need a richer timeline or Jobs view. Use Slack when a team channel should drive the mesh.

Setup¶

Create a Telegram bot token with @BotFather, identify the chat id Repowire should accept, then start the bot:

TELEGRAM_BOT_TOKEN=... TELEGRAM_CHAT_ID=... repowire telegram start

Tokens can also live in ~/.repowire/config.yaml:

telegram:
  bot_token: "..."
  chat_id: "..."

repowire setup writes those keys after the interactive prompt for Telegram credentials. The bot can run on any machine that can reach the daemon. There is no hosted Telegram bot; you bring your own bot and run repowire telegram start.

Common workflows¶

List and select peers:

/peers
/select repowire

After /select repowire, every normal message opens a tracked ask to repowire until you /clear or select another peer. The reply keyboard shows current and recent peers so the target is visible.

Open an ask to a specific peer:

@repowire status?

Send a fire-and-forget nudge:

/notify @repowire deploy finished
/fyi logs are uploaded

Send a photo or document when the target agent should inspect a file. The bot uploads it to the daemon and includes the local path in the outgoing ask.

Commands and API¶

Command	What it does
`/peers` (or `/start`, `/list`)	Show peers as inline buttons
`/select <peer>`	Sticky-route subsequent messages to that peer
`/switch <peer>`	Alias for `/select`
`/clear`	Clear the sticky target
`@peer message`	Open an ask to a specific peer and update sticky routing
`/notify [@peer] message`	Fire-and-forget notification; uses sticky target if omitted
`/fyi [@peer] message`	Alias for `/notify`

Agents can reach your phone with:

notify_peer("telegram", "deploy finished, green across CI")

Limits¶

Telegram traffic is not proxied by the relay; the bot talks directly to Telegram's API and to your daemon.
Attachments live in ~/.repowire/attachments/ with a 24-hour TTL and 10 MB upload limit.
Messages from @telegram are framed as human instructions to the receiving agent.

Troubleshooting¶

Bot does not respond to /peers: confirm TELEGRAM_BOT_TOKEN is set and the bot is registered with @BotFather.
Messages route to the wrong peer: check the sticky target with /peers; /clear resets it.
Photos do not reach the agent: confirm the daemon is reachable from the bot host and /attachments is not blocked by a proxy.