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
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