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Telegram: your bots on your phone

Pair one Telegram chat with a space. Then you can write to your bots from Telegram and get their replies there, along with what needs you: questions, approvals, steps only you can do, and stuck bots. It uses a Telegram bot you make yourself, and your kwant needs no public address for it. It's off until you set it up.

A kwant chat where a request to open a pull request waits for approval, and the approval row reads "Allowed once from Telegram".
An approval tapped in Telegram shows in the chat as allowed once from Telegram.

Set it up

Open Settings › This space › Connections and choose Telegram.

  1. Your Telegram bot. In Telegram, message @BotFather and make a new bot. BotFather replies with a token: paste it in kwant. Nothing is saved until Telegram accepts the token.
  2. Pair your Telegram account. Open the pairing link, or scan its QR code with your phone, and press Start in Telegram. The link works once, for 10 minutes.
  3. Choose your alerts under "Send me 'needs you' alerts for…", then send a test.

Telegram can read what you and your bots send in this chat. Bot chats there aren't end-to-end encrypted, so keep passwords and codes out of it.

What comes to Telegram

  • Questions with choices: answer with buttons in Telegram, or with a reply.
  • Approvals: what's asked, with an Open button.
  • Human steps: sign-ins, codes and CAPTCHAs, with an Open button.
  • A bot is stuck or stopped, with what it was doing.
  • A task you started from Telegram is done. Answers to your messages always come back.

Approvals from Telegram

Allow approvals from Telegram is off at first. While it's off, approvals show what's asked, and you approve in the app: Telegram can't grant anything.

With it on, some approvals get Allow once on the phone. kwant checks the approval again when you tap. "Always allow" stays in the app, and each approval made from Telegram is logged as "from Telegram".

Never from Telegram: production connections, payment floors, human steps and Take over. Those always open the app, with the reason.

The token and the spending stop

  • The bot token stays in the vault. It never appears in replies, logs or a bot's context.
  • When the daily spending stop holds a message you sent from Telegram, the chat says so once. Press Continue in kwant, then send it again.
  • If another program reads the same Telegram bot, kwant pauses and says so. Stop the other program and your bots pick up again.
  • Unpair has an Undo. Disconnect deletes the token.