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Telegram is where most people start with ZeroClaw, and for good reason. Creating a bot takes about 30 seconds, there's no business verification process, and Telegram's Bot API gives you features like inline keyboards, voice messages and file sharing that make a ZeroClaw assistant genuinely useful beyond plain text chat.
This guide covers everything from creating your bot in BotFather to sending your first message through ZeroClaw. I'm assuming you've already set up ZeroClaw on your VPS and configured an AI provider. If not, start there first.
Create a Telegram bot with BotFather
Open Telegram on your phone or desktop and search for @BotFather. This is Telegram's official bot for creating and managing other bots. Start a conversation and send:
/newbotBotFather asks you two things. First, a display name for your bot. This can be anything, like "My AI Assistant" or "ZeroClaw Bot" or whatever makes sense to you. Second, a username that must end in "bot" (for example, myzeroclaw_bot). Usernames are unique across all of Telegram, so you might need to get creative if your first choice is taken.
Once you've picked both, BotFather hands you an API token. It looks something like 7123456789:AAG-abc123def456ghi789jkl012mno345p. Copy this entire string. You'll need it in the next step.
Bind the Telegram channel in ZeroClaw
SSH into your VPS and run:
zeroclaw channel bind-telegram YOUR_BOT_TOKENReplace YOUR_BOT_TOKEN with the full token from BotFather. ZeroClaw validates the token by making a test call to Telegram's API. If it succeeds, you'll see your bot's username confirmed in the output.
Verify the channel is registered:
zeroclaw channel listYou should see Telegram listed as an active channel. If something doesn't look right, run the channel diagnostics:
zeroclaw channel doctorThis checks connectivity to Telegram's servers, validates your token and reports any configuration issues it finds.
Send your first message
Open Telegram and navigate to your bot. You can find it by searching for the username you chose earlier, or by clicking the link BotFather gave you (usually t.me/yourbot_name). Tap Start to initiate the conversation.
Type any message. Something simple like "Hello, what can you do?" works fine. ZeroClaw receives the message through the Telegram channel, forwards it to your AI provider and sends the response back. If your VPS service is running (via zeroclaw service status) and the provider is configured correctly, you should see a reply within a few seconds.
If nothing happens, the most common culprit is that ZeroClaw's service isn't running. Check with zeroclaw service status and start it if needed. The second most common issue is a wrong or expired bot token, which zeroclaw channel doctor will catch.
Telegram bot settings worth changing
Back in BotFather, there are a few settings you'll probably want to adjust for a better experience.
Bot description and about text — Send /setdescription and /setabouttext to BotFather to customize what people see when they first open your bot. It's cosmetic but it makes the bot feel less like a placeholder.
Privacy mode — By default, Telegram bots in group chats only see messages that start with a / command or explicitly mention the bot. If you want ZeroClaw to respond to all messages in a group, send /setprivacy to BotFather and set it to "Disable." Be thoughtful about this in active groups because your bot will respond to everything, and that can get noisy fast.
Bot commands — Send /setcommands to register slash commands that appear in Telegram's command menu. For example you could register /status - Check bot status and /memory - Show memory stats. These are cosmetic shortcuts in the Telegram UI; ZeroClaw handles the actual processing. If you've worked with OpenClaw's Telegram integration before, the BotFather command optimization guide covers this in more depth.
Voice messages and media
ZeroClaw can process Telegram voice messages if you have a transcription provider configured. The v0.5.0 release added a TranscriptionProvider trait with support for Whisper-compatible APIs. When a user sends a voice note, ZeroClaw transcribes it, processes the text through your AI provider and sends back a text reply.
Setting this up requires adding a transcription provider to your config. The channels reference documentation covers the specifics. If you're running Ollama locally, you can point the transcription endpoint at a local Whisper instance to keep everything on your server.
For file sharing, ZeroClaw handles documents and images sent through Telegram according to your tool configuration. PDF handling, image analysis and file downloads all depend on which tools are enabled in your setup.
Group chats vs. private messages
ZeroClaw works in both private conversations and Telegram group chats, but the behavior differs. In a private chat, the bot sees and responds to every message automatically. In a group, it depends on the privacy mode setting we discussed above.
A pattern that works well for teams: create a private Telegram group, add your ZeroClaw bot, disable privacy mode and use the bot as a shared AI assistant for the team. Everyone in the group can ask questions, and the bot's persistent memory means it builds context over time from the entire group's conversations. There is something genuinely practical about having a team assistant that remembers what was discussed last Tuesday without anyone having to re-explain the context.
