Chat integrations

Telegram and Signal notify you when a session waits for input or finishes, and let you reply and approve permission prompts from your phone. Both are part of the free core — Slack is an enterprise feature.

Long answers are split across several messages. Permission prompts expire after about 30 minutes; after that, answer in the web terminal.

One replica only

Both integrations require backend.replicas=1. Telegram's getUpdates and the Signal receive socket each allow exactly one consumer, and a second poller would fight the first for every update. The chart refuses to render otherwise:

Error: chat.telegram/chat.signal require backend.replicas=1

The backend default is 2, so enabling chat halves it. That is a real availability trade-off: no failover, and a brief gap during rolling updates. Nothing is lost when the pod restarts — Telegram buffers updates by offset for roughly 24 hours.

Telegram

1. Create the bot

Talk to @BotFather, create a bot, and copy the token. It looks like 123456789:AAF….

2. Enable it

helm upgrade agenthub agenthub/open-agenthub -n agenthub --reset-then-reuse-values \
  --set chat.telegram.enabled=true \
  --set-string chat.telegram.botToken=<token> \
  --set backend.replicas=1

Use --set-string for the token: it contains a colon, and --set would try to be clever about it.

Without Helm, the equivalent environment variables are Chat__Telegram__Enabled=true and Chat__Telegram__BotToken=<token>.

3. Verify it works

The backend is quiet on success, so "no errors in the log" is the expected state and not much of a signal. Ask Telegram instead — the backend publishes the bot's command menu at startup, so if the commands are registered, the connection works end to end:

curl -s "https://api.telegram.org/bot<token>/getMyCommands"

{"ok":true,"result":[
  {"command":"link","description":"Link this chat to your AgentHub account"},
  {"command":"sessions","description":"List sessions in this chat"},
  {"command":"use","description":"Choose the session for plain replies"},
  {"command":"status","description":"Show session status"}]}

An empty result means the backend never reached Telegram. Check the log for the giveaway line:

kubectl -n agenthub logs deploy/agenthub-backend | grep -i telegram

Telegram long polling not started (no bot token / disabled) means the configuration did not arrive. A Conflict: terminated by other getUpdates request warning means two pollers are running — expected for a few seconds during a rolling update, a problem if it persists (check backend.replicas).

4. Link your account

Each user links themselves: Settings → Notifications → Telegram → Generate link code, then open the t.me deep link, or send /link <code> to the bot directly.

Per-session forum topics

Optional, and worth it if you run several sessions at once. Create a Telegram group, turn on Topics, add the bot as an admin with the Manage topics permission, and send /link <code> in the group. Every session then gets its own topic.

WARNING

Everyone in a linked group can reply to sessions and approve permission prompts.

Commands

Command	Effect
/new <prompt>	Start a new autonomous session working on the prompt
/sessions	List sessions in this chat
/use <tag>	Route plain replies to that session
!status	Show session status

Plain messages are typed into the active session's terminal.

Signal

1. Enable it

This deploys signal-cli-rest-api with a persistent volume for the account keys:

helm upgrade agenthub agenthub/open-agenthub -n agenthub --reset-then-reuse-values \
  --set chat.signal.enabled=true \
  --set-string chat.signal.number=+15551234567 \
  --set backend.replicas=1

2. Register the sender number

Once, via port-forward: POST /v1/register/<number> followed by /v1/register/<number>/verify/<token> with the SMS or voice code. You can also link it as a secondary device by QR code. The exact commands are in the comment block of templates/signal-cli.yaml.

The image tag is pinned on purpose — the account registration and keys live on the PVC, so check the signal-cli-rest-api release notes for migration steps before bumping it.

3. Link your account

Each user enters their number under Settings → Notifications → Signal and confirms the six-digit code sent via Signal.

Reply routing

Quote a session message to answer that session; plain replies go to the newest session, or the one picked with !use. React 👍/👎 on a permission prompt to allow or deny, and quote-reply always for allow-always. Commands: !new <prompt> (start an autonomous session), !sessions, !use <tag>, !status.

Desktop notifications

A browser notification when a session waits for input or finishes. Enable it per device under Settings → Notifications — no cluster configuration needed.