{"slug": "telechat-self-host-claude-ai-across-telegram-whatsapp-slack-with-one-npm-install", "title": "Telechat: self-host Claude AI across Telegram/WhatsApp/Slack with one npm install", "summary": "A developer has released Telechat, a self-hosted Claude AI bot that connects to Telegram, WhatsApp, Slack, and web chat from a single process. The tool runs on user hardware, stores conversation history locally in SQLite, and routes queries to the cheapest Claude model that handles them, saving about 60% on API costs. It also includes budget caps, persistent memory, and a desktop bridge for remote approval of destructive actions.", "body_md": "Built something the r/selfhosted crowd might appreciate: **Telechat** — a self-hosted Claude AI bot that connects to Telegram, WhatsApp, Slack, and web chat from a single process.\n\n##\nWhy self-hosted matters here\n\nAnthropic launched Claude Code Channels recently — Claude on Telegram/Discord, managed by Anthropic. It works great, but every message goes through their cloud. Telechat takes the opposite approach:\n\n- Runs on your machine (laptop, VPS, RPi, NAS — anything that runs Node.js or Python)\n- Messages flow: phone → your server → Anthropic API → back to phone\n- No relay server, no telemetry, no analytics\n- SQLite for conversation history, stored locally\n- The only external call is to Anthropic's chat-completions API for inference\n\nYour messages, your hardware, your data.\n\n##\nInstall\n\n`telechat init`\n\nwalks you through an interactive setup — API key, bot tokens for whichever platforms you want, model preferences, budget limits.\n\n##\nWhat it does\n\n-\n**Multi-platform** — Telegram, WhatsApp, Slack, Web Chat. All running simultaneously from one process.\n-\n**Smart model routing** — Routes queries to the cheapest Claude model that handles them. Saves ~60% on API costs vs always using Sonnet.\n-\n**Budget caps** — Per-user daily and monthly limits. Set $5/day and forget about it.\n-\n**Persistent memory** — SQLite-backed. Context carries across conversations.\n-\n**Desktop Bridge** — If you run Claude Code on your desktop and it needs approval for a destructive action, you get a push notification on your phone. Approve/deny remotely.\n-\n**Media support** — Send images for analysis, generate images if you have DALL-E configured.\n\n##\nResource usage\n\nLight. Single process, ~50MB RSS idle, spikes briefly during inference calls. SQLite means no database server. The bottleneck is always the Anthropic API latency, not local compute.\n\n##\nSelf-hosting tips\n\n- Run behind a reverse proxy (Caddy/nginx) for HTTPS if using webhooks\n- Telegram supports long-polling (no public IP needed) — great for home setups\n- WhatsApp requires the WhatsApp Business API (webhook-based, needs HTTPS)\n- Set up systemd/Docker restart policies for reliability\n\n[telechat.fyi](https://telechat.fyi?utm_source=devto&utm_medium=syndication&utm_campaign=telechat&utm_content=telechat-self-host-claude-ai-across-telegram-whatsapp-slack-with-one-npm-install) | [GitHub](https://github.com/telechatai)\n\nWould love feedback from the self-hosting community. What would make this more useful for your setup?", "url": "https://wpnews.pro/news/telechat-self-host-claude-ai-across-telegram-whatsapp-slack-with-one-npm-install", "canonical_source": "https://dev.to/sumaninster/telechat-self-host-claude-ai-across-telegramwhatsappslack-with-one-npm-install-26pj", "published_at": "2026-07-31 06:22:29+00:00", "updated_at": "2026-07-31 06:33:46.400106+00:00", "lang": "en", "topics": ["artificial-intelligence", "ai-products", "developer-tools", "ai-infrastructure"], "entities": ["Telechat", "Anthropic", "Claude", "Telegram", "WhatsApp", "Slack", "SQLite", "DALL-E"], "alternates": {"html": "https://wpnews.pro/news/telechat-self-host-claude-ai-across-telegram-whatsapp-slack-with-one-npm-install", "markdown": "https://wpnews.pro/news/telechat-self-host-claude-ai-across-telegram-whatsapp-slack-with-one-npm-install.md", "text": "https://wpnews.pro/news/telechat-self-host-claude-ai-across-telegram-whatsapp-slack-with-one-npm-install.txt", "jsonld": "https://wpnews.pro/news/telechat-self-host-claude-ai-across-telegram-whatsapp-slack-with-one-npm-install.jsonld"}}