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Once set up, you can message your butler through any Telegram bot you create. CORE registers the webhook automatically: no manual Telegram configuration needed beyond creating the bot.
This channel is available in PR #739. Make sure your instance is running that version or later.
What you need: A publicly reachable CORE instance (APP_ORIGIN must be set in your .env).

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Step 1: Create a Telegram bot

  1. Open Telegram → search for @BotFather → /start
  2. Send /newbot → follow the prompts (pick a display name and a username ending in bot)
  3. BotFather replies with your bot token: copy it, you’ll need it in Step 3

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Step 2: Ensure your instance is publicly reachable

Telegram needs to send webhook events to your CORE instance. Confirm APP_ORIGIN is set to your public URL in .env: 
APP_ORIGIN=https://your-domain.com
CORE uses this to construct the webhook URL it registers with Telegram: 
https://your-domain.com/webhooks/telegram?channelId=<channel-id>
For local development, use a tunnel like ngrok: ngrok http 3033 and set APP_ORIGIN to the tunnel URL.

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Step 3: Create the channel via the CORE API

CORE stores the bot token in the channel record and automatically registers the webhook with Telegram when you create the channel. Get your API token from the CORE dashboard → Settings → API, then run: 
curl -X POST https://your-domain.com/api/v1/channels \
  -H "Authorization: Bearer <your-api-token>" \
  -H "Content-Type: application/json" \
  -d '{
    "name": "My Telegram",
    "type": "telegram",
    "config": { "bot_token": "123456:ABC-DEF1234ghIkl-zyx57W2v1u123ew11" },
    "isDefault": true
  }'
A successful response returns { "success": true, "channelId": "..." }. At this point, CORE has called Telegram’s /setWebhook with your channel ID: no further Telegram configuration is needed.

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Step 4: Talk to your butler

Open Telegram → search for your bot by username → send a message: 
What are my open GitHub issues?
Your butler replies directly in the chat.

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Managing the channel

List channels: 
curl https://your-domain.com/api/v1/channels \
  -H "Authorization: Bearer <your-api-token>"
Delete a channel (also deregisters the Telegram webhook automatically): 
curl -X DELETE https://your-domain.com/api/v1/channels/<channel-id> \
  -H "Authorization: Bearer <your-api-token>"