Telegram Setup

Telegram is the fastest way to put your agents in your pocket. Once connected, your agents message you proactively, you talk back in plain language, slash commands drive any installed agent, and choice buttons let you answer with a tap. It’s all powered by a bot you own — your messages go from your phone to Telegram to your Mac, never through Agentum’s servers.

What you’ll set up

  1. The Telegram app on your phone (and optionally desktop).
  2. A personal bot, created with Telegram’s official @BotFather.
  3. Two values pasted into Agentum: the bot token and your numeric user ID.

Total time: about five minutes. Agentum also has an illustrated, step-by-step version of this exact flow built in — System → Settings → Bot & messaging → Show setup walkthrough — with QR codes so you can do the phone parts without typing links.

Step 1: Install Telegram

Get Telegram from telegram.org/apps (iPhone, Android, and desktop are all fine — you only need one). If you’re new to Telegram, sign up with your phone number.

Step 2: Create your bot with @BotFather

@BotFather is Telegram’s official bot for making bots.

  1. Open t.me/BotFather (or search @BotFather in Telegram — verified, blue check).
  2. Send /newbot.
  3. It asks for a display name — anything you like (“My Agentum”).
  4. It asks for a username — must be unique and end in bot (e.g. janedoe_agentum_bot).
  5. BotFather replies with your bot token — a ~45-character string like 7213...:AAH9.... Copy it.

Treat the token like a password. Anyone who has it can send messages as your bot. If it ever leaks, message @BotFather → /revoke to issue a fresh one, then paste the new one into Agentum.

Step 3: Press Start on your bot

Open your new bot’s chat (BotFather’s reply links to it) and tap Start. This matters: Telegram bots can’t message a user who hasn’t started them first. If you skip this, Agentum’s test message fails with a “chat not found”-style error — and the app will tell you exactly that and prompt you to go tap Start.

Step 4: Find your numeric user ID

Agentum only accepts messages from Telegram accounts you allowlist, identified by numeric ID:

  1. Open @userinfobot in Telegram.
  2. Send /start.
  3. It replies with your Id — a 7–12 digit number. Copy it.

Step 5: Connect it in Agentum

  1. Open System → Settings → Bot & messaging.
  2. Paste the Bot Token (reveal toggle if you want to check it).
  3. Paste your ID into Allowed Telegram User IDs (comma-separate if you add more than one account).
  4. Save, then click Restart agent when the banner appears.

Agentum sends a test message to confirm the round trip. When it lands in your bot chat, you’re live.

What you can do once connected

Just talk. Any plain-language message is handled by your AI, which can see every command your installed agents expose — so “what’s on my calendar tomorrow?” or “remind me to call the plumber at 5” routes to the right agent automatically and replies in the same chat.

Slash commands. Type / to see the native autocomplete menu. Built-ins include:

Command What it does
/help List available commands
/status System health snapshot — core, integrations, agents
/model Show the active LLM provider and model
/new Start a fresh conversation (clears chat context)
/cancel Bail out of an in-progress prompt
/app Open the Agentum Mini App
/version Running app version
/restart Restart the background agent on your Mac
/kill Emergency stop for all automation

Installed agents add their own commands to the same menu (a scheduling agent contributes /schedule, a meetings agent /meetings, and so on) — the menu updates automatically as you install and remove agents.

Tappable choice buttons. When an agent asks a question with fixed options (“Approve / Skip / Snooze”), the options arrive as real Telegram buttons. Tap one and the choice is recorded — no typing.

Approvals. Agents that draft outbound actions (emails, scheduling replies) queue them for your sign-off; the Mini App’s Inbox is the tap-through approval surface (see below).

A mirrored desktop thread. Your Telegram conversation also appears inside the desktop app as a pinned 📱 Telegram session in Agentum Chat — read it and reply from your Mac, and /new resets the thread on both ends. Replies you type on the desktop show up in Telegram labeled as coming from the desktop.

Current limits worth knowing: photos are received but only their captions are read (no image analysis yet), and voice notes aren’t supported end-to-end yet — the bot will tell you to type instead.

The Telegram Mini App

The Mini App is a phone-friendly control panel that opens inside Telegram — tap the Open Agentum menu button in your bot chat (or send /app). It has four surfaces:

  • Home — your briefing screen: a summary hero, what’s coming up, what your agents did, and live agent widgets.
  • Inbox — everything waiting on you, with approve/deny actions and a pending-count badge.
  • Act — a compose surface (quick Telegram or email sends) plus a Commands panel that turns every agent command into a tappable button or a one-field form.
  • Status — queue counts and system health.

The Mini App needs Remote Access turned on, because your phone has to reach your Mac from anywhere — Agentum provisions a secure Cloudflare tunnel for exactly this. Enable it from System → Settings → Telegram Mini App; a short wizard checks that your bot token and allowlist are in place and sets everything up. Details in Remote Access.

Security model, in one paragraph: every Mini App request carries a cryptographic signature that Telegram generates from your bot token, and Agentum verifies it and checks the user is in your allowlist before answering. Nobody else can open your Mini App, even with the URL — everything else 404s at the network edge.

Troubleshooting quick hits

  • Bot never replies → re-check the token, confirm your numeric ID is in the allowlist, confirm you pressed Start on the bot, then Save and Restart agent.
  • “Chat not found” on the test message → you haven’t started the bot; open its chat and tap Start.
  • Commands menu looks stale → it re-syncs when agents change; give it a moment or restart the agent.
  • Mini App won’t open → Remote Access must be running; see Remote Access and Troubleshooting.

Next steps