Your first channel

A channel is how people reach your agent: Telegram, Discord, Signal, Slack, WhatsApp, Matrix, IRC, Email, Nostr and more — 19 in total, the CLI included. This page walks through Telegram, the most common first choice.

Configure the channel#

The channel wizard reconfigures channels and allowlists without touching the rest of your setup:

nullclaw onboard --channels-only

Or edit ~/.nullclaw/config.json directly. Channels use accounts wrappers — the object key becomes the account id:

{
  "channels": {
    "telegram": {
      "accounts": {
        "main": {
          "bot_token": "123:ABC",
          "allow_from": ["user1"],
          "reply_in_private": true
        }
      }
    }
  }
}

Get the bot_token from Telegram's @BotFather, and put your own user id in allow_from.

Allowlists: empty means deny#

Every channel sits behind an allowlist. The rules are strict on purpose:

• Empty allow_from denies inbound messages on allowlist-based channels.
• Explicit ids make a private bot — the usual setup.
• "allow_from": ["*"] allows everyone. High-risk; opt in deliberately.

Start it#

Channels can run individually in the foreground, or all together under the gateway:

# just this channel
nullclaw channel start telegram

# or the full runtime: gateway + all configured channels + heartbeat + scheduler
nullclaw gateway

Then check health:

nullclaw channel status
nullclaw channel list          # known and configured channels
nullclaw channel info telegram # accounts configured for one channel type

If nothing arrives#

Work through these in order:

1. nullclaw channel status — is the channel healthy?
2. Check channels.telegram.accounts.* — token typos are the usual suspect.
3. Check gating settings: allow_from, group_allow_from, require_mention and similar per-channel keys.
4. nullclaw doctor for exact error details.

Beyond Telegram#

The same accounts pattern applies across channels. A Discord account takes token, guild_id, allow_from and allow_bots; IRC takes host, port, nick, channel and tls. Two channels have extra prerequisites worth knowing:

• Nostr uses nak under the hood — install it and make sure it's on $PATH. The onboarding wizard can generate or import a keypair and encrypts it at rest. Your owner_pubkey is always allowed through the DM policy.
• WhatsApp and Telegram webhooks flow through the HTTP gateway with their own verification rules — see Gateway and service.

One agent per chat is only the beginning: named agent profiles can be bound to specific chats or Telegram forum topics with /bind — each with its own workspace and memory namespace. The binding pattern lives in Configuration.

Next#

Your agent talks. Now decide what it remembers — Memory — and which models it thinks with — Providers.