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 when the target agent should inspect it. The bot uploads it to the daemon and includes it in the outgoing ask. Attachments sent by agents are uploaded back to Telegram as photos or documents.

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
`/keyboard on` / `/keyboard off`	Show or hide the persistent peer keyboard
`@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.