Telegram Setup Guide
Telegram is the fastest way to get started with your AI assistant. You will create a bot through Telegram's official BotFather, grab the bot token, and paste it into the FixedCostAgents portal. Your AI assistant will start responding to messages within minutes.
What you'll need
- A Telegram account (free)
- A FixedCostAgents account (any tier)
Step-by-step instructions
Open Telegram and find BotFather
Open the Telegram app (mobile or desktop) and search for @BotFather. BotFather is Telegram's official bot for creating and managing bots. Look for the verified checkmark next to the name.
Alternatively, open this link directly: t.me/BotFather
Create a new bot
Send the command /newbot to BotFather.
BotFather will ask you two questions:
- Display name — the name that appears in chats (e.g., “Rose” or “My AI Assistant”). This can include spaces.
- Username — a unique identifier that ends in “bot” or “_bot” (e.g.,
rose_assistant_bot). No spaces allowed.
Copy your bot token
After creating the bot, BotFather will send you a message containing your bot token. It looks like this:
Copy this token carefully. You will paste it into the FixedCostAgents portal in the next step.
/revoke in BotFather to generate a new one. Never post your token in public channels, Git repos, or screenshots.Add the token to the FixedCostAgents portal
Log into your FixedCostAgents customer portal and navigate to:
My Assistants → [your AI assistant] → Integrations (the plug icon)
Paste the bot token into the Telegram Bot token field, then click Apply changes. The portal verifies the token with Telegram before saving — a bad paste is caught immediately, not discovered later as silence.
Applying restarts your assistant so it picks up the new channel — this usually takes under 2 minutes, and the page shows its progress. After that it polls Telegram for new messages automatically; no webhook URL configuration is needed.
Send your first message
Open Telegram and search for your bot by its username. Send /start to initiate the conversation, then try sending a message like “Hi, what can you do?”
Your AI assistant should respond within a few seconds. If you chose a personality during onboarding, you will see it reflected in the response.
(Optional) Customize your bot's profile
Back in BotFather, you can customize your bot's appearance:
/setuserpic— add a profile photo/setdescription— set the text users see before starting a chat/setabouttext— the short bio that appears on the bot's profile
Common issues
- Make sure you sent
/startto the bot first. - Stored tokens are never displayed, so if you suspect a bad token, use Replace credentials on the Integrations page and paste it again from BotFather (no trailing spaces).
- Check the AI assistant status in your portal dashboard — the AI assistant must be running.
- Wait for the restart to finish after applying changes — the Integrations page shows progress, usually under 2 minutes.
https://api.telegram.org/bot<TOKEN>/deleteWebhookBot — note that searching by the bot's display name will not find it), or make the assistant a group admin, which lets it see every message. We recommend @mentions: the assistant only processes what is addressed to it, which is better for group privacy too. (Turning Group Privacy off in BotFather is unreliable in practice — Telegram caches the old setting; don't rely on it.)What to do next
Follow the First Week checklist — start with Meeting 1: say hello, verify your AI assistant responds, and give it a simple task.
Teach your AI assistant your email voice by forwarding 50–200 sent emails — see the voice training guide.
Your bot token is encrypted at rest and stored securely. It is never stored in plaintext, never in environment variables, and never logged.
Stuck? Reach out at support@fixedcostagents.com or join our Discord community.
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