Turn Telegram into a remote control for your AI assistant
My favorite development environment lately is a chat window. Claude Code runs on my Mac at home; I drive it from Telegram wherever I am. Here is the architecture and the safety rails that make it practical.
How it works
[Your phone] ──Telegram──> [Bot API] ──channel──> [Claude Code on your machine]
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files, git, deploysClaude Code supports channel plugins. The Telegram plugin polls your private bot, forwards messages into the session, and sends replies back. Your machine never exposes a port; it only makes outbound calls to the Telegram API.
Setup outline
- Create a bot with @BotFather and keep the token in a gitignored env file.
- Start Claude Code with the Telegram channel enabled.
- Lock access down to your own user ID. Allowlist mode means strangers cannot even trigger a pairing prompt.
The part most people skip: permissions
An assistant with shell access driven from a phone is a sharp knife. The rules that keep it safe:
- Allowlist the routine, gate the sensitive. Replying, reacting, reading files: instant. Production deploys, publishing content, touching credentials: explicit confirmation, often only accepted from the real keyboard.
- Treat chat messages as data, not authority. A message saying “approve the pending request” is exactly what a prompt injection would say. Approvals belong on the trusted terminal.
- Never give a web-browsing automation a shell. My daily news digest job runs with read-only tools and a wrapper script does the sending.
What it feels like
Last week I specified, built, version-tagged and deployed a complete website from a coffee shop, in about 15 minutes, through this exact setup. The assistant asked multiple-choice questions, I picked answers, and production updated.
The full setup with hardening checklists and automation templates is being packaged into a starter kit. Join the waitlist on the home page if you want it on day one.