Talk to Your Lobster From Anywhere

OpenClaw is running — awesome. But right now you can only talk to it from a terminal on your computer. Let's fix that by connecting it to Telegram, so you can chat with your AI agent from your phone, tablet, or anywhere.

This is the moment it starts feeling like you have a real AI assistant.

Step 1: Create Your Telegram Bot

Every Telegram bot starts with a chat with the BotFather — Telegram's built-in bot for making bots. (Yes, it's bots all the way down.)

1. Open Telegram and search for @BotFather
2. Type /newbot
3. Give your bot a name — this is what people see (e.g., "My OpenClaw Assistant")
4. Pick a username ending in bot (e.g., myclaw_bot)
5. BotFather will hand you a token — it looks something like 123456789:ABCdef...

Step 2: Get Your Telegram User ID

OpenClaw needs to know who is allowed to talk to your bot. You'll need your Telegram user ID (it's a number, not your username).

The easiest way to get it:

1. Search for @userinfobot in Telegram
2. Send it any message
3. It replies with your user ID — copy that number

Step 3: Configure OpenClaw

Now let's tell OpenClaw about your Telegram bot. Open the config file:

nano ~/.openclaw/openclaw.json

This file has a bunch of other OpenClaw settings in it — don't worry about those. Scroll down until you find the channels section, and add your Telegram config there:

{
  "channels": {
    "telegram": {
      "enabled": true,
      "token": "YOUR_BOT_TOKEN_HERE",
      "allowedUsers": [YOUR_USER_ID_HERE]
    }
  }
}

Replace YOUR_BOT_TOKEN_HERE with the token from BotFather, and YOUR_USER_ID_HERE with the number you got from @userinfobot.

Step 4: Start OpenClaw

If OpenClaw isn't already running, start it up:

openclaw gateway start

You can watch the logs in real time to make sure everything connects properly:

tail -f ~/.openclaw/logs/openclaw.log

Look for a line mentioning Telegram — that means the connection is live.

Step 5: Test Incoming Messages

Time for the moment of truth. Open Telegram and find your bot (search for the username you picked in Step 1).

Send it a message:

hello

Now check your logs:

grep -i telegram ~/.openclaw/logs/openclaw.log

If you see your message show up in the logs — the connection is working. Your bot is listening.

Step 6: Test Outgoing Messages

Let's make sure OpenClaw can send messages to you too. Run this from your terminal:

openclaw message send --channel telegram --to YOUR_USER_ID "Hello from OpenClaw!"

Check Telegram — you should see the message pop up from your bot.

Step 7: Test Auto-Reply

This is the fun part. Go back to Telegram and ask your bot something:

what time is it

OpenClaw should think about it and reply right there in the chat. If it does — you now have a working AI agent in your pocket.

What's Next?

You've got OpenClaw installed, running, and connected to Telegram. You can chat with your AI agent from anywhere. That's a massive first step.

In the next molt, we'll start making OpenClaw actually useful — installing skills, automating tasks, and putting your lobster to work.