Coding Agents over Telegram, Part 2: From Zero to an Agent That Answers

A developer built a coding agent that responds to Telegram messages and drives a tmux pane on a local machine. The setup uses OpenClaw as a Telegram gateway, pinned Node.js and pnpm versions, and a readiness check script. The guide provides both a fast automated path and a manual step-by-step approach for wiring Telegram, the local box, and the agent together.

This is the one post in the series you do , not just read. By the end you'll have a single Telegram topic where you type a message and a coding agent answers and drives a tmux pane on your own box. That's the entire goal, nothing more. Memory, monitors, tool servers, and the supervisor all come later; none of them are needed to get an agent answering you. Budget ~30–45 minutes. If you only do one thing, do the Fast path, then prove it with the readiness gate. Everything below the gate is manual explanation and debugging you can skip until you need it. The Telegram wiring is the mechanical part; the real failures hide in local state. Confirm every line before you start: tmux , and shell access that survives disconnects you'll leave a gateway running . mybox:1.1 . Write it down; you'll hard-code it into the agent's instructions.Pin these. "It runs on Node" is not enough; the gateway is sensitive to the runtime. | Component | Pinned version | Notes | |---|---|---| | Node.js | 24.11.1 | The gateway is built against Node 24; newer majors can fail the native build. | | Package manager | pnpm 11.2.2 | OpenClaw's packageManager field. corepack fetches it for you. | | OpenClaw | github.com/openclaw/openclaw , pinned commit tested on 2026.5.27 | Pin a commit or tag; don't track main for a setup everyone must reproduce. | | Coding agent | opencode, installed and authenticated | Pin the version your team standardizes on. | | Node manager | nvm | This guide assumes nvm; adapt the commands if you use asdf or system Node. | Two scripts do the whole local setup. Grab them from the gist, then run them around the Telegram steps: Download the bootstrap + readiness scripts curl -fsSL "https://gist.githubusercontent.com/jerilkuriakose/cd0f8353aac74e47c591111b758943e9/raw/setup-openclaw.sh" -o setup-openclaw.sh curl -fsSL "https://gist.githubusercontent.com/jerilkuriakose/7cf94af3e96526f9f14d0c28b6c26b69/raw/ready-check.sh" -o ready-check.sh chmod +x setup-openclaw.sh ready-check.sh 1. Pin the runtime, fetch + build OpenClaw, and launch the gateway. Pass your bot token to also write a minimal config in one shot: OPENCLAW BOT TOKEN="<BOT TOKEN " OPENCLAW BOT ACCOUNT="my-bot" ./setup-openclaw.sh 2. Do the Telegram steps in "Telegram side" below BotFather + group + topic , then add the allowlist + topic route from "Wire them together". 3. Prove it works: AGENT ID=my-agent PANE=mybox:1.1 ./ready-check.sh setup-openclaw.sh pins Node 24.11.1 and pnpm 11.2.2 via nvm and corepack , clones and builds github.com/openclaw/openclaw , and launches the gateway. ready-check.sh runs the readiness gate for you. Prefer to understand each step, or hit a snag? Follow the manual path. Three parts: the Telegram side, the box side, then wiring them together. You must be the group's creator , so do these from your own Telegram account: @BotFather → /newbot → name it → save the project-a .You also need your own numeric Telegram user ID for the allowlist. Easiest: message @userinfobot and it replies with your ID. Alternatively, it appears in the gateway log as the sender once messages start flowing in the next step. The gateway has to know about your bot before it can poll Telegram, so write a minimal valid config first. Create ~/.openclaw/openclaw.json with just the bot account. Use strict JSON no comments, no trailing commas because that's exactly what the gateway parses and what you'll validate against: { "channels": { "telegram": { "enabled": true, "accounts": { "<your-bot-account ": { "botToken": "<BOT TOKEN " } } } } } Lock it down and validate before launching: python chmod 600 ~/.openclaw/openclaw.json python3 -c "import json; json.load open '$HOME/.openclaw/openclaw.json' ; print 'JSON OK' " Get OpenClaw and build it. It's open source. Pin the runtime, clone, install with the corepack -provided pnpm, and build: nvm install 24.11.1 && nvm use 24.11.1 corepack enable && corepack prepare pnpm@11.2.2 --activate git clone https://github.com/openclaw/openclaw.git ~/repos/openclaw cd ~/repos/openclaw Optional: pin a tested commit/tag for reproducibility tested on 2026.5.27 git checkout <commit-or-tag pnpm install pnpm build takes a few minutes Now launch the gateway in its own tmux session so it survives your disconnect: pnpm gateway:watch launches the gateway and manages its own tmux session Find your log path it differs by config , then confirm the gateway came up and the bot is polling: If logging.file is set, use ~/.openclaw/logs/openclaw.log. Otherwise the dated default: ls -t /tmp/openclaw/openclaw- .log | tail -1 default location grep -a 'gateway ready' <your-log-path | tail -1 expect a recent line The log directory is locked down 0700 , so read it from the shell, not an editor's file browser.This initial launch, and any later logging or plugins.load change, needs a gateway re start. The group/topic/routing edits in the next section hot-reload, no restart needed. Config lives in ~/.openclaw/openclaw.json . The gateway hot-reloads routing/topic/channel edits; no restart needed for these. We do this in two phases because you need the chat and topic IDs from the log , and the only way to make them appear is to let messages through first. Phase 1: find the chat ID and open the group temporarily. With the gateway now polling, send a message in your topic. It gets blocked the group isn't configured yet , which conveniently logs the chat ID: grep -a 'not-allowed' <your-log-path | tail -1 → {"chatId":<CHAT ID ,"title":"<your group ","reason":"not-allowed"} Add a groups block to your account so messages flow and topic IDs get logged. This is a fragment; merge the groups key into the account you already created, keeping the file strict JSON: "groups": { "<CHAT ID ": { "groupPolicy": "open", "requireMention": false } } Save. The gateway hot-reloads no restart . Keep the open window tiny. groupPolicy: "open" letsanyone in the groupdrive a shell-capable agent. The group must be private with only you in it, and this is a momentary bootstrap step: switch to allowlist Phase 2 as soon as you've harvested the topic IDs, before adding anyone else or doing real work. Phase 1b: harvest topic thread IDs. Send a message in each topic label them by text so you can tell them apart, since topic IDs are not sequential by creation order , then: grep -ao 'Inbound message telegram:group ^" ' <your-log-path | sort -u → ...:topic:<TOPIC THREAD ID Phase 2: lock it down and route the topic to an agent. Now switch the group to an allowlist owner-only , add yourself, map the topic to an agent, and declare that agent. Strict JSON, merged into your config: "channels": { "telegram": { "enabled": true, "accounts": { "<your-bot-account ": { "botToken": "<BOT TOKEN ", "groups": { "<CHAT ID ": { "groupPolicy": "allowlist", "allowFrom": "<YOUR TELEGRAM USER ID " , "requireMention": false, "topics": { "<TOPIC THREAD ID ": { "agentId": "<your-agent-id " } } } } } } } }, "agents": { "list": { "id": "<your-agent-id ", "workspace": "~/.openclaw/workspace-<name ", "agentDir": "~/.openclaw/agents/<name " } } requireMention: false lets you type naturally instead of prefixing every message with an @mention . allowFrom with only your user ID is what stops anyone else in the group from driving a shell-capable agent. It's your numeric Telegram ID, kept as a quoted string as the config expects for example, "123456789" . Give the agent its instructions. This is the step that makes status , send , and restart work; the agent's behavior comes entirely from the files in its workspace . Create the workspace directory first the agentDir must be unique per agent; the gateway creates it on first run : mkdir -p ~/.openclaw/workspace-<name Then put this in ~/.openclaw/workspace-<name /AGENTS.md , a minimal command contract: <your-agent-id You are bound to tmux pane <PANE , an interactive coding-agent session. Hard rules - ALL tmux operations target <PANE . Never touch any other session. - Read with tmux capture-pane -t <PANE -p ; write with tmux send-keys -t <PANE ... . - Strip ANSI codes before relaying pane output to Telegram. - After send-keys, wait a few seconds before re-capturing; replies aren't instant. - Confirm before any destructive action EXCEPT the explicit "restart" command below. Common phrasings → actions | User says | You do | |---|---| | "status" / "what's in tmux?" | capture <PANE , strip ANSI, summarize the last ~60 lines | | "send <msg " | send-keys -t <PANE -l -- "<msg " , then Enter, wait, capture | | "compact" / "new session" | send /compact or /new to the pane | | "interrupt" / "stop it" | confirm, then send C-c | | "restart" | run the restart sequence below no confirmation | Decision / option routing You are a relay, not the owner of the work in the pane. If your previous reply summarized options/questions from the agent e.g. "A/B", "yes/no", "Proceed?" , then short replies like A , B , yes , no , do it , sorry A are answers for the pane : forward them verbatim; do not act on them yourself. Only act locally when explicitly addressed "you do option A" . Restart sequence no confirmation 1. Resolve the exact session id first do not blindly "continue", which can reopen the wrong session . 2. Exit the agent's UI cleanly and wait until you actually see a shell prompt. 3. Relaunch with EXACTLY this command, resuming that session id: <your-launch-command --resume <session id 4. Capture and report whether it came back up. Safety rails applied to anything you relay - Production: strict read-only. Never relay mutations. - Never relay pushes/merges to shared branches. - Shared infra gateways, API gateways : never mutate without explicit human approval. Replace <PANE and the restart command with your exact values; leave them vague and the agent will improvise and can lose your session. This single fileisyour agent; the workspace can contain just AGENTS.md to start. Required: validate before you trust the save. An invalid openclaw.json is dangerous: on a restart the gateway rejects it, auto-restores the last-known-good, and the watch process exits that is, an outage . Editing a running gateway is safer a bad edit is reverted with no downtime , but never restart on an unvalidated config. Every time: python 1. JSON is parseable python3 -c "import json; json.load open '$HOME/.openclaw/openclaw.json' ; print 'JSON OK' " 2. Dry-run the config against a temp copy never touches the live gateway . The copy holds your bot token; keep it 0600 and delete it after. cp ~/.openclaw/openclaw.json /tmp/oc-check.json && chmod 600 /tmp/oc-check.json OPENCLAW CONFIG PATH=/tmp/oc-check.json pnpm openclaw doctor --non-interactive expect Errors: 0 rm -f /tmp/oc-check.json 3. Confirm the hot reload landed grep -a 'config hot reload applied' <your-log-path | tail -3 You are not done when the config saves. You're done when you have evidence the whole path works. Verify all five; this is exactly what you'll confirm to the session organizer: status in your topic; you get a response not silence . tmux capture-pane -t <PANE -p | tail -n 40 You should see your text injected into the coding agent. ls -t ~/.openclaw/agents/<name /sessions/ topic-<TOPIC THREAD ID 2 /dev/null groupPolicy: "allowlist" , your ID in allowFrom , and requireMention: false ; you're no longer in open mode from Phase 1.If all five hold, you're ready for the session. Capture a redacted screenshot/log snippet of 1– 2 as your "I'm ready" artifact, and redact the log excerpt too it carries chat IDs, thread IDs, your user ID, and message text , not just the screenshot. Recovery first. If a restart took the gateway down, your edit wasn't lost; the gateway auto-restored the last-known-good and saved your version alongside it. Recover from ~/.openclaw/openclaw.json.clobbered. also check .last-good / .bak , fix the cause, validate above , then restart: nvm use 24.11.1 tmux kill-session -t openclaw-gateway-watch-main cd ~/repos/openclaw && pnpm gateway:watch grep -a 'gateway ready' <your-log-path | tail -1 | Symptom | Cause | Fix | |---|---|---| Bot silent; log shows "reason":"not-allowed" | Group not configured, or you're not in allowFrom | Add the group; put your numeric ID in allowFrom or use open while testing | Bot only replies when @mention ed | requireMention defaulting to true | Set requireMention: false | | Bot doesn't see messages at all | Telegram privacy mode on a non-admin bot | Make the bot a group admin | | Topic IDs never appear in the log | Messages blocked before topic resolution | Open the group Phase 1 first, then re-send | getUpdates 409 Conflict | Same bot token polled by two gateways | One gateway per token; kill the duplicate poller | | Config edit "vanished" / gateway down after restart | Invalid JSON at startup → auto-restore → watch exits | Recover from .clobbered. ; validate; restart | | Agent replies but the pane does nothing | Wrong <PANE , or the coding agent isn't running there | Fix the pane target; relaunch the agent in that pane | This is a public-internet bot with shell reach. Treat it that way: openclaw.json . chmod 600 @BotFather . allowFrom .You do not need any of this to finish the readiness gate; it all comes in Part 4 / the session: AGENTS.md already handles status / send / restart /option replies prompt-driven; the router just makes it faster and stricter ops agent box-wide shell . One relay + one pane is the whole assignment.24 hours out, confirm you can tick all five readiness items and post your redacted "ready" artifact. If you're blocked, send your symptom plus your Node/pnpm versions and the last few gateway log lines redacted so it can be sorted before we're all in the room. Part 3 is the operating contract: what to type, what not to type, and how to supervise the agent safely once it's answering you.