Set Up the Telegram Bridge#

Forward messages between a Telegram bot and the OpenClaw agent running inside the sandbox. The Telegram bridge is an auxiliary service managed by nemoclaw start.

Prerequisites#

  • A running NemoClaw sandbox, either local or remote.

  • A Telegram bot token from BotFather.

Create a Telegram Bot#

Open Telegram and send /newbot to @BotFather. Follow the prompts to create a bot and receive a bot token.

Set the Environment Variable#

Export the bot token as an environment variable:

$ export TELEGRAM_BOT_TOKEN=<your-bot-token>

Start Auxiliary Services#

Start the Telegram bridge and other auxiliary services:

$ nemoclaw start

The start command launches the following services:

  • The Telegram bridge forwards messages between Telegram and the agent.

  • The cloudflared tunnel provides external access to the sandbox.

The Telegram bridge starts only when the TELEGRAM_BOT_TOKEN environment variable is set.

Verify the Services#

Check that the Telegram bridge is running:

$ nemoclaw status

The output shows the status of all auxiliary services.

Send a Message#

Open Telegram, find your bot, and send a message. The bridge forwards the message to the OpenClaw agent inside the sandbox and returns the agent response.

Restrict Access by Chat ID#

To restrict which Telegram chats can interact with the agent, set the ALLOWED_CHAT_IDS environment variable to a comma-separated list of Telegram chat IDs:

$ export ALLOWED_CHAT_IDS="123456789,987654321"
$ nemoclaw start

Stop the Services#

To stop the Telegram bridge and all other auxiliary services:

$ nemoclaw stop