u/Shunkleburger

The setup

A systemd service (Python, ~1400 lines) bridges Telegram to Claude Code's CLI. Every message I send becomes:

claude -p "<my message>" --output-format stream-json --permission-mode bypassPermissions --mcp-config bot-mcp.json

It's locked to my Telegram chat_id only — no one else can talk to it. Sessions persist via --resume, so it's one continuous conversation, not stateless one-shots. Runs with full bash/tool access: it can read/write any file, run any shell command, manage Docker, edit configs — basically the same access I'd have at a terminal, just reachable from my phone.

Features we built on top of the raw bridge

• Telegram-native formatting: the agent outputs HTML (bold/code/pre), not markdown, since Telegram doesn't render markdown
• Inline buttons: it can offer tap-to-confirm choices instead of me typing "yes"
• Image/file sending: charts, screenshots, log excerpts come back as actual attachments
• [SILENT] / [REPLY] tags it can prepend to control notification behavior and threading
• Live activity status: a single message that live-edits with what it's doing ("Reading config.yaml", "Running docker ps"...) so my phone doesn't get spammed with a notification per tool call
• Just added: a real 5-minute status recap on long tasks — separate message, not just an edit, listing everything done since the last update
• A /stop command that can kill an in-flight run mid-task
• Message queueing — if I fire off a follow-up while it's still working, it queues instead of colliding
• Shared long-term memory across sessions (both this bot and my regular terminal Claude Code read/write the same memory store), so it doesn't forget project context between conversations
• Home Assistant MCP integration — it can query/control the smart home directly, not just talk about it
• Auto-escalation: non-trivial builds get a second opinion from a bigger model before shipping

What it's actually done for me (not hypothetical — this week alone)

• Diagnosed a NAT hairpin routing issue between two devices on my LAN by testing connectivity from both sides
• SSH'd into a separate Home Assistant device to add a config block and wired up a full GPS-tracking integration, end to end
• Stood up and fully tore down self-hosted services (Docker Compose, reverse proxy, dashboard tiles, docs) — including cleaning up after itself
• Reset an admin password when I got locked out of a service, diagnosing a stuck interactive prompt along the way

Lessons learned

• Long-running background tasks don't survive between Telegram messages — the process model is one-shot per message, so anything async has to either finish inside one turn or be built as a "durable" workflow (we use n8n for scheduled/recurring stuff)
• Don't restart the bot's own systemd service mid-task — it kills the very process reporting back to you (learned that one the hard way)
• Worth building a real activity indicator early — silence during a 20-minute debugging session reads as "is this broken?" even when it's working fine

Happy to answer questions where I can.