Telegram Bridge

telegram-bridge

Control Claude Code remotely from your phone via Telegram.

A bash bridge that polls the Telegram Bot API and pipes messages to claude --print, sending responses back. No Node.js, no Python — just curl, jq, and tmux.

The Problem

Claude Code v2.1.80+ introduced a --channels flag for Telegram integration, but most users on API-based subscriptions get this error:

Channels are not currently available

This is a server-side feature flag that hasn't rolled out broadly yet. Open issues tracking this:

• Issue #36503 — "Channels are not currently available"
• Issue #37071 — Telegram channel not working for API users

The Workaround

This plugin bypasses the channels system entirely with a bash bridge that polls the Telegram Bot API directly, pipes messages to claude --print, and sends responses back. No Node.js, no Python — just curl, jq, and tmux.

Credit: The bridge script is based on the excellent workaround by @tzachbon: https://gist.github.com/tzachbon/60246bb96bac7f2e98637f08e895e939

Install

claude plugin marketplace add https://github.com/StavPartouche/claude-channels-workaround
claude plugin install telegram-bridge@claude-channels-workaround

Commands

Command	Description
/telegram-bridge:setup	Guided first-time setup — walks you through bot creation, config, and starting the bridge
/telegram-bridge:start	Start the bridge in a background tmux session
/telegram-bridge:status	Check if the bridge is running
/telegram-bridge:logs	View the last 50 lines of the bridge log
/telegram-bridge:kill	Stop the bridge

First time? Just run /telegram-bridge:setup — it handles everything step by step.

How it works

1. bridge.sh long-polls Telegram's getUpdates API (30s timeout)
2. Incoming messages are checked against an allowlist in ~/.claude/channels/telegram/access.json
3. A typing indicator fires every 4 seconds while Claude processes
4. The message is piped to claude --print --system-prompt-file CLAUDE.md
5. The response is sent back via Telegram's sendMessage API, chunked at 4096 chars

Prerequisites

• Claude Code installed and authenticated (claude --print "hello" should work)
• curl and jq (install via brew install jq on macOS)
• tmux (install via brew install tmux)
• A Telegram account

License

MIT