Telegram

Telegram is the quickest channel to set up: one bot token, no plugins, and it works from behind a firewall — Kiro Crew reaches out to Telegram, so there's nothing to expose. Replies stream back live with tappable option buttons.

1. Open Settings → Messaging Channels → Telegram in the dashboard
2. Message @BotFather on Telegram, send /newbot, follow the prompts to get a token
3. Message @userinfobot to get your numeric user ID
4. Paste the bot token into the dashboard panel
5. Add your user ID to the Allowed users list
6. Click Save — the gateway restarts and connects

The status badge turns green when connected.

# Save token to ~/.kiro/crew/.env
echo "TELEGRAM_BOT_TOKEN=123456789:AA…" >> ~/.kiro/crew/.env

In ~/.kiro/crew/config.json:

{
  "telegram": {
    "enabled": true,
    "allowed_user_ids": [123456789]
  }
}

Then: kirocrew restart

Kiro Crew only talks to the people and places you name.

• Trusted numeric user IDs go in allowed_user_ids; an empty list means nobody
• A private chat with an allowed user is always served. If the private chat uses forum topics, each topic is its own session; a message outside any topic keeps the original DM session
• A supergroup's forum topics are served only when allow_forum is true and the supergroup's chat ID is in allowed_forum_chat_ids; an empty list denies every group. Each topic is its own session. A message in the General topic, which has no thread, is denied. forum_activation decides when the bot answers inside an allowed topic
• Anyone else is silently dropped and recorded in the audit log

When you have resumed a dashboard session with /sessions and a message reaches it while a turn is running, Kiro Crew folds the message into the running turn or queues it for the next one. The conversation replies Steering that session or Queued for that session so you know which happened. Use /steer or /queue to choose yourself.

Prefer the TELEGRAM_BOT_TOKEN env var over bot_token — it keeps your secret out of config.json.

Where api.telegram.org is blocked, set TELEGRAM_API_BASE_URL in ~/.kiro/crew/.env to a reverse proxy, then restart the Gateway. The value must be a full method template containing {token} and {method}:

TELEGRAM_API_BASE_URL=https://tg-proxy.example.com/bot{token}/{method}

The URL must use https, except for a loopback host (127.0.0.1, ::1, or localhost), because the bot token travels in the URL. An invalid value is ignored with a warning in the Gateway log, and the public host is used instead. The Gateway loads .env at startup and reads the variable from its environment on every call, so the override applies to every Bot API request once the Gateway has restarted.