Documentation

Creating your Telegram bot

Your agent lives inside a Telegram bot that belongs to you — not to us. You create it in about two minutes, for free, and it stays yours even if you leave the platform. This page is the long version of step 2 of the setup wizard.

What BotFather is

BotFather is Telegram’s own robot for creating bots. It is official, made by Telegram itself, and it is the only way to get a bot. You talk to it like you talk to a person: you send messages, it answers.

Check the blue tick

Searching for “botfather” on Telegram brings up imitators. The real one is @BotFather with a blue verified badge next to the name. Never paste a token into any other chat.

Creating the bot

1
Open Telegram and search for @BotFather. Open the chat and press Start.
2
Send /newbot.
3
It asks for a name. This is the display name people see at the top of the chat — spaces and accents are fine. E.g. Sofia.
4
It asks for a username. This is the @handle, and it must end in bot. E.g. sofia_home_bot.
5
BotFather replies with a long token. Tap it once to copy, come back to the wizard and paste it. We check it on the spot.

The three things it asks you for

What	Example	Rules
Name	`Sofia`	Free text. Shown at the top of the chat. Changeable later.
Username	`sofia_home_bot`	Unique across all of Telegram, 5–32 characters, letters, numbers and underscore only, must end in bot. Permanent.
Token	`123456789:AAEhBO…`	Generated by BotFather. This is the password of your bot — treat it like one.

If it says “Sorry, this username is already taken”, someone got there first — the handle has to be unique worldwide. Add something personal: your surname, your city, a number.

About the token

The token is what lets a program answer messages as your bot. Anyone holding it can read and send messages in that bot’s name, so:

Never post it in a group, a screenshot or an email.
We store it encrypted, and it is only ever used by your own agent.
If you think it leaked, send /revoke to BotFather, pick the bot, and it hands you a fresh token. The old one dies instantly — then paste the new one into your agent page.
Lost the token? Send /token to BotFather and pick the bot.

One bot, one agent

A token can only be used by one running program at a time. If the same bot is connected to two agents — or to some other automation you set up before — both will start dropping messages. Create a separate bot for each agent.

Optional finishing touches

Purely cosmetic, all done by sending these to BotFather:

/setuserpic — the profile picture.
/setdescription — the text shown on the empty chat screen, before anyone presses Start.
/setabouttext— the short blurb on the bot’s profile.
/setname — changes the display name (the @username can never be changed).

When something goes wrong

What you see	What it means
Invalid username	It must end in bot and may only contain letters, numbers and underscore. No hyphens, no spaces, no accents.
Sorry, this username is already taken	Handles are unique across all of Telegram. Try a variation.
We reject the token	Usually a copy-paste accident: an extra space, a line break, or the wrong message copied. Copy it again by tapping the token itself in the BotFather chat.
The bot never replies	Two common causes: you have not created the agent yet, or you never sent /start to the bot. Both are covered in the setup wizard.