Why Build a Telegram AI Bot?
Telegram is one of the most popular messaging platforms for bot integrations. With over 900 million monthly active users, it offers a rich Bot API, inline keyboards, file sharing, and group chat support. An AI-powered Telegram bot can handle customer inquiries, automate tasks, deliver reports, and act as a personal assistant — all within the app your users already use.
Traditional Telegram bot development requires coding in Python or Node.js, hosting on a server, managing webhooks, and handling updates manually. With Clawion, you skip all of that. If you're new to the underlying technology, start with What is OpenClaw? to understand how the agent framework works.
Step 1: Create Your Telegram Bot Token
Open Telegram and message @BotFather. Send the /newbot command and follow the prompts to name your bot. BotFather will give you an API token — copy this token, you'll need it in the next step.
Your bot token is what connects your Clawion agent to your Telegram bot. Clawion encrypts this token at rest and never exposes it in logs or dashboards.
Step 2: Choose a Template
Sign in to Clawion and start a new deployment. You'll see 13+ pre-built templates designed for common use cases — personal assistant, customer support, research analyst, content creator, and more. Each template comes with a tuned system prompt, recommended skills, and pre-configured automations.
If none of the templates fit your needs, choose the Custom Agent template and build your agent from scratch with full control over the system prompt, workspace files, and skill selection.
Step 3: Configure and Deploy
Paste your Telegram bot token, choose your AI model (Claude, GPT, or Gemini), and enter your API key. If you have a Claude Max subscription, you can use it directly instead of an API key. Toggle the skills you want — web search, image generation, code execution, and more. Preview your automations and hit Deploy.
Clawion provisions an isolated Fly.io Machine with your configuration. Within 60 seconds, your bot is live on Telegram, ready to respond to messages.
What Your Bot Can Do
Depending on the template and skills you selected, your Telegram bot can search the web in real time, scrape websites for data, generate images, execute code, translate messages, monitor RSS feeds, and run scheduled automations. All of this happens autonomously — your bot doesn't just respond, it acts.
You can manage your bot from the Clawion dashboard: start, stop, redeploy, or update its configuration at any time without touching any code.