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Telegram Setup

OpenClaw uses Telegram in two ways:

  1. OpenClaw channel — chat with your AI agent via a Telegram bot (required)
  2. Host alerter — VPS health alerts sent to Telegram (optional)

Both can use the same bot, or you can create separate bots.

1. Create a Telegram Bot

  1. Open Telegram and message @BotFather
  2. Send /newbot
  3. Choose a display name (e.g., "OpenClaw")
  4. Choose a username ending in bot (e.g., openclaw_bot)
  5. BotFather replies with your bot token — a string like 123456789:ABCdefGHIjklMNOpqrsTUVwxyz

2. Get Your Telegram User ID

Send any message to @userinfobot — it replies with your numeric user ID.

3. Configure

Add both values to stack.yml under your claw config, and the bot token to .env:

# stack.yml — under claws.<name>
telegram_bot_token: "123456789:ABCdefGHIjklMNOpqrsTUVwxyz"
your_telegram_id: "123456789"
  • YOUR_TELEGRAM_ID gates elevated mode — only this Telegram user can activate /elevated commands
  • OPENCLAW_TELEGRAM_BOT_TOKEN connects the gateway to Telegram as a messaging channel

After deployment, the gateway connects to Telegram automatically. Message your bot to start chatting — the gateway may prompt you to approve the device via openclaw devices approve (same flow as browser pairing).

4. Host Alerter (Optional)

The host alerter sends disk/memory/CPU alerts via Telegram. You can reuse the same bot or create a separate one.

Get Your Chat ID

Option A: Personal DMs (simplest)

  1. Send any message to your bot

  2. Open this URL in a browser (replace <TOKEN> with your bot token):

    https://api.telegram.org/bot<TOKEN>/getUpdates

  3. Find "chat":{"id":123456789} in the JSON — that number is your chat ID

Option B: Group Chat

  1. Add your bot to a group

  2. Send a slash command in the group (e.g., /start)

    — bots have privacy mode enabled by default and only see slash commands in groups

  3. Check getUpdates as above — the group chat ID will be a negative number (e.g., -1001234567890)

Tip: If slash commands don't appear in getUpdates, disable privacy mode: message @BotFather, send /setprivacy, select your bot, choose Disable, then remove and re-add the bot to the group.

Save the Config

# .env
HOSTALERT_TELEGRAM_BOT_TOKEN=123456789:ABCdefGHIjklMNOpqrsTUVwxyz
HOSTALERT_TELEGRAM_CHAT_ID=123456789

Can be the same token as OPENCLAW_TELEGRAM_BOT_TOKEN. The chat ID is often your personal ID or a group ID (negative number).

Test It

./scripts/telegram-test.sh

Or with a custom message:

./scripts/telegram-test.sh "Hello from OpenClaw"

How Alerts Work

The host alerter (/home/openclaw/scripts/host-alert.sh) runs via cron every 15 minutes and checks:

  • Disk usage (threshold: 85%)
  • Memory usage (threshold: 90%)
  • Docker daemon health
  • Container crash/restart detection

Alerts are only sent on state changes — you won't get repeated messages for the same ongoing issue. A recovery message is sent when all checks pass again.

Updating Configs

See deploy/host/host-alert.sh for threshold configs.

Ask claude to redeploy host alert after you've made any changes to host-alert.sh or the Telegram settings in .env.