Telegram

1. Create a bot

Create a Telegram bot via @BotFather and copy your bot token.

2. Configure

letta channels configure telegram

The interactive wizard will:

• Auto-install the Telegram runtime dependencies
• Ask for your bot token (validates it against the Telegram API)
• Let you choose a DM policy (pairing, allowlist, or open)
• Ask whether to use Telegram Rich Messages in private chats

Config is written to ~/.letta/channels/telegram/accounts.json.

Some Telegram Desktop and Web versions display Rich Messages as blank message bubbles. Answer no when setup asks whether to use Rich Messages if you need these clients. For an existing account, set rich_private_chat_default to false in ~/.letta/channels/telegram/accounts.json. Preserve every other account field and restart the channel server. Letta will then use standard Telegram messages with HTML formatting.

3. Start the server with channels enabled

letta server --channels telegram

You’ll see [Telegram] Bot started as @your_bot in the output. The bot begins long-polling for messages immediately.

4. Pair a Telegram chat to an agent

Send any message to your bot from Telegram. With the default pairing policy, the bot replies with a pairing code and instructions to complete setup in the Letta app or CLI.

You can complete the pairing from the CLI:

letta channels pair \
  --channel telegram \
  --code B5ZR5H \
  --agent <your-agent-id> \
  --conversation <your-conversation-id>

The --agent flag defaults to the LETTA_AGENT_ID env var and --conversation defaults to LETTA_CONVERSATION_ID (or "default").

You can also pair from within an active agent session (app, CLI, or desktop):

/channels telegram pair B5ZR5H

5. Chat

Messages from Telegram now flow into the agent’s conversation. The agent responds using the MessageChannel tool. Rich Messages preserve structured formatting on supported clients. Standard messages convert markdown to Telegram-safe HTML formatting, including bold, italic, code, and links.