Telegram

Message your agent from Telegram, day or night. You create your own bot, paste its token into Zinley, and everything sent to that bot reaches your agent — same memory, same tools, same credits as the app.

The Apps tab, Chat apps sub-tab: Telegram and Discord with Set up buttons, and WhatsApp, WeChat, and Slack marked Soon with Preview buttons.
Configure → Your Zinley → Apps → Chat apps — where Telegram is set up.

Set it up

1. Create your bot in Telegram

Open Telegram and message @BotFather:

  • Send /newbot.
  • Give it a display name (e.g. Zinley) — this is what people see.
  • Give it a username ending in bot (e.g. my_zinley_bot).

BotFather replies with an HTTP API token — a long string like 123456789:AAG.... Copy it. Treat it like a password: anyone with that token can act as your bot.

2. Paste the token into Zinley

Go to Configure → Your Zinley → Apps → Chat apps and choose Set up on Telegram. Paste the token and save. Zinley wires up the bot for you — there's no webhook URL to configure and nothing to host.

The Telegram connection dialog: the bot-token field, owner and guest username lists, and the group-chat toggle.
Connect Telegram — paste the bot token, decide who's an owner and who's a guest.

3. Say hello

Open your bot in Telegram and send a message. If it answers, you're done.

Who's allowed to talk to it

Your bot isn't open to the world. You list the Telegram usernames that may use it, in two groups:

  • Owners — that's you (and anyone you fully trust). Owners get the whole agent: your data, your people and topics, your connected devices — an owner message can even wake your desktop and run on-device tools.
  • Guests — people you want to be able to reach your agent without handing over your life. Guests run in privacy mode: no owner data, no device access, and sensitive tools are stripped out. Good for a colleague, a client, or a family member.

Add usernames without the @ or with it — either works. Anyone not on either list gets nothing.

Start with just yourself as owner. Add guests once you've seen how your agent answers.

Group chats

Group chats are off by default. Zinley ignores your bot in groups until you turn the group chat option on — a deliberate switch, because a group is a room full of people you may not have listed.

With groups enabled, the same owner/guest rules still apply to whoever is speaking.

Day-to-day use

Anything you'd ask in chat works here:

"What's on my calendar tomorrow?" "Draft a reply to the last email from Linh and show it to me before sending." "On my MacBook, check whether the build finished."

A few practical notes:

  • Long answers get split or trimmed. Telegram caps a single message at 4,096 characters.
  • Owner messages can reach your devices. If your desktop is asleep, Zinley wakes it — usually within about 10 seconds — and carries on.
  • Confirmation still applies. Outward actions (sending an email, placing a call) wait for your OK, exactly as they do in the app.

Credits

Every message to your bot is a normal request and spends credits from the same balance as the web app, phone, and email. There's no free Telegram tier. When you run out, the bot tells you so rather than going quiet — top up or wait for your daily credits to reset. See Plans & limits and Billing.

Status and disconnecting

Back on Apps → Chat apps, the Telegram row shows your connection status — which bot is linked, and who's listed as owner and guest. You can:

  • Update the lists — add or remove owners and guests at any time.
  • Toggle group chat on or off.
  • Disconnect — unlinks the bot immediately; messages stop reaching your agent. Your token is stored encrypted and is discarded when you disconnect.

To revoke access on the Telegram side as well, ask @BotFather to /revoke the token (or /deletebot the whole bot).

Troubleshooting

  • The bot doesn't reply — check your Telegram username is on the owner or guest list, and that it matches exactly (usernames, not display names).
  • It replies in DMs but not in a group — group chat is still off; turn it on.
  • "Out of credits" — see Billing.
  • It can't reach your computer — the device may have cross-device turned off, see Devices overview.

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