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Telegram

Variable Required Default Description
TELEGRAM_BOT_TOKEN no — Enables the Telegram platform.
TELEGRAM_ALLOWED_USER_IDS yes, if TELEGRAM_BOT_TOKEN is set — Comma-separated Telegram user IDs allowed to talk to the bot. Required once the token is set; the bot refuses to start without at least one.

Mycel always runs in your terminal. Give it a Telegram bot token and the same agent is reachable from your phone as well, both platforms served by the one process you started.

History is shared, not per channel: the chat continues whatever conversation is active, so you can start something in the terminal and pick it up on your phone. /resume on Telegram lists the same past conversations the terminal offers.

This step is optional: without TELEGRAM_BOT_TOKEN the agent simply logs that the Telegram platform is disabled and carries on with the terminal UI.

Create the bot

  1. Open Telegram and start a chat with @BotFather.
  2. Send /newbot and follow the prompts to choose a name and a username for your bot.
  3. Copy the token BotFather gives you and set it as TELEGRAM_BOT_TOKEN in your .env.

  4. Get your numeric Telegram user ID — for example by messaging @userinfobot — and set it as TELEGRAM_ALLOWED_USER_IDS.

    TELEGRAM_BOT_TOKEN=123456789:AA...
TELEGRAM_ALLOWED_USER_IDS=987654321

Restart Mycel, open the chat with your bot and send /start.

What you get

Mycel registers its commands with Telegram on startup, so typing / in the chat brings up the same list as the terminal, with /resume rendering past conversations as inline buttons you can tap.

You can also send photos: Telegram downloads them, and Mycel passes them to the model as long as the model has vision support.

A Telegram bot is public by default — only the token is secret

Anyone who finds your bot's username can open a chat with it, so Mycel only responds to the user IDs listed in TELEGRAM_ALLOWED_USER_IDS; the bot refuses to start if that list is empty. It's a comma-separated list of numeric Telegram user IDs, e.g. TELEGRAM_ALLOWED_USER_IDS=111,222 if more than one person you trust should be able to reach the agent. Keep the bot token out of version control too (.env is already gitignored), and revoke it through BotFather if it leaks.