Telegram

Telegram gives you your Chief of Staff in your pocket. You message your own Telegram bot, your Chief answers, and when it needs permission you get buttons to approve or deny. It's the only chat app where approvals come to you.

Murage must be running on your computer to receive messages. Your completed pairing reconnects by itself after Murage restarts.

What you need#

• Telegram on your phone or computer.
• About five minutes at the computer running Murage.
• A Chief of Staff in your workspace. Telegram always pairs with the current Chief.

1. Create a Telegram bot#

1. In Telegram, open BotFather (the link in Murage opens it for you).
2. Send /newbot and follow the prompts to give it a name and a username.
3. Copy the bot token BotFather gives you. Treat it like a password.

2. Save the token in Murage#

1. Open Settings → Messaging apps.
2. In the Telegram card, paste the token into Bot token.
3. Choose Save token. You'll see "Token saved. Pairing has not started."

The token is stored encrypted on your computer and isn't shown again. The status line now reads Token saved · not paired.

3. Pair with your Chief#

1. Choose Pair with Chief. Murage shows a command: /pair followed by a long code.
2. Choose Copy pairing command, or Open Telegram bot to jump straight to your new bot.
3. Send the command to your bot in a private Telegram chat.

The code expires after 10 minutes. The status updates by itself while it waits (Waiting for pairing). When it reads Paired, the bot replies to confirm.

4. Link the account to yourself#

The first reply asks you to link this account before chatting. Murage doesn't assume a chat account is you, so you choose:

1. Open Team map and choose Manage memory.
2. Under People and verified accounts, find the row that starts "Telegram account".
3. Choose This is my account.

Then send your message again. You only do this once. Choose This is my account if you want approvals on Telegram: approval buttons only go to an account linked to you, the workspace owner. Separate person keeps that account isolated from your own context.

Chatting

Message your bot and your Chief of Staff answers. Your messages share the Chief's current conversation, so you can pick it up on your computer later.

• Text: type as you would to a person. Replies show basic formatting: bold, italics, code and links.
• Voice: send your Chief a voice message and it replies with a voice message in its own voice. Voice needs Flux Router credits or your own voice keys.
• Pictures and files: share these in Murage on your computer or phone. The Telegram chat is for talking to your Chief.

Only your paired account in that one private chat is heard. Messages in groups, forwarded messages and messages from anyone else are ignored.

Approvals and questions

When your Chief needs permission in your conversation with it, Telegram shows the request with buttons:

• Approve once or Deny for ordinary requests.
• Approve once, Allow for this task or Deny for stop-line requests, such as messaging someone new. Allow for this task covers the same kind of action in the same place until the task ends.

Each request expires after 10 minutes. After that it says "Expired. Review this action in Murage."

When your Chief asks you a question, you get its options as buttons. Tap an answer, or tap several and then Submit. If the question allows your own words, tap Reply with text and send your answer (/cancel goes back to the options). Skip question tells your bot you didn't answer. Questions stay open for 30 minutes.

Some things always stay in Murage: requests from other bots, anything too long to show in full, secret answers such as passwords, routine and skill proposals. Use the Inbox or menu bar for those.

Typing "approve", "yes" or /approve doesn't approve anything. You'll get "Review approvals in the Murage app. Telegram messages cannot approve actions."

What comes back to Telegram

• Replies to messages you sent from Telegram, and any voice notes your Chief made while answering.
• Approval requests and questions from your Chief's conversation.

Work you start in Murage, and routines such as a morning brief, report in the app, not in Telegram.

Skip approvals for your own messages (optional)

If your Chief's default is Full access or No limits, Bot settings → Permissions has a switch: Also skip approvals for my messages from Telegram, Slack and Discord. You can only change it in the desktop app. See Permissions and the stop line.

Limits

• One Telegram bot, one private chat, one person, your Chief only.
• A reply longer than 4,096 characters, Telegram's limit, is cut short. Read the full result in Murage.
• Up to three unfinished tasks from Telegram at a time. Wait for one to finish, or review them in Murage.
• If a reply fails with a temporary error, Murage retries a few times, then marks it as not delivered. A reply that did go through is never sent twice.

Change or remove it

• Revoke ends the connection and cancels tasks from Telegram that haven't finished. You need to revoke before you can change the token or pair a different bot.
• If Telegram rejects your token (for example, you revoked it in BotFather), paste a new token for the same bot and choose Replace token. Your pairing is kept. A token for a different bot is refused.

Troubleshooting

• "Pairing expired · create a new code": choose Create new pairing code and send the new command. If you send an expired code, the bot says "This pairing code expired."
• "Another app is receiving this bot": something else, such as another program or server, is reading this bot's messages, so Murage paused. Stop it, then choose Retry now.
• "Token rejected · paste a new token for this bot": copy the current token from BotFather and choose Replace token.
• "This token belongs to a different Telegram bot.": paste the token for the paired bot, or Revoke before pairing another bot.
• "Chief unavailable · revoke and re-pair": your Chief changed or was removed. Choose Revoke, then pair again with the current Chief.
• "Connection saved · retrying automatically": Telegram couldn't be reached. Murage keeps your pairing and tries again.
• "Link this channel account to yourself or another person...": finish step 4 above, then resend.
• "A message delivery is uncertain. Check Telegram before sending it again.": Murage can't confirm a reply arrived. Look in Telegram before repeating the request.
• No reply at all: check that the computer is awake and Murage is running.

Related: Approve from your phone, Channels overview, Voice notes, Approvals and the stop line.