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Connect a Telegram bot to any Friday space so users can chat with it over DM. Messages flow into the same conversation pipeline the web chat uses, and replies go back to Telegram.

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Prerequisites

  • A Telegram account on your phone (the one that will own the bot).
  • Friday running with the bundled tunnel active (Telegram requires a public HTTPS URL).

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Setup

1

Create a bot with BotFather

  1. Open the Telegram app on your phone and search for BotFather (official account, blue checkmark). Tap Start.
  2. Send /newbot.
  3. Choose a display name (what users see, e.g. Friday Studio).
  4. Choose a username ending in bot (e.g. friday_studio_xxxxx_bot).
  5. BotFather replies with a bot token like 123456789:ABC-DEF-GHIJKLM.... Treat it like a password — anyone with it controls the bot.
2

Connect Telegram in Studio

  1. In Studio, select your space from the sidebar and click Info.
  2. Find the Communicators card and click Connect next to Telegram.
  3. Paste the Bot Token into the form, then submit.
Studio stores the token securely and registers the webhook with Telegram automatically. The status flips to Connected when it’s done.
3

Talk to your bot

In Telegram, search for your bot by username (@friday_studio_xxxxx_bot) and tap Start or send a message. The first message creates a chat in your space — it should appear in Studio with a green TELEGRAM badge, and replies flow back automatically.

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Troubleshooting

Most likely the tunnel URL is stale (the development tunnel gets a new URL on every restart). Reconnect Telegram in Studio so it re-registers the webhook against the current tunnel.
Double-check you copied the full token from BotFather (numeric ID before the colon, secret after). Regenerate via BotFather → /token if needed.

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Configure via YAML

For CI or fully scripted setups, paste the bot token directly into workspace.yml or the .env file in the Friday home directory (default ~/.friday/local/.env).
workspace.yml
When you skip Studio, you also need to register the webhook with Telegram yourself. Grab the tunnel URL from Studio → Settings → Webhook tunnel and run:
Restart Friday after editing config.