Signal vs Telegram for agent and automated use
I've been a Signal supporter since day one. I'd much rather use Signal than Telegram, but Signal makes it difficult for an agent or any kind of automated messaging system to reliably send messages.
Signal insists on using a phone number for registration, which makes no sense for this use case. I realize there was originally an anti-spam rationale for this a decade ago, but it's 2026, surely that is a solvable problem? Telegram allows me to create bots that function independent of my phone number but those bots don't create a spam problem AFAIK.
Reliable code to send to Telegram is widely available and is first to be available in new software (e.g. Hermes). Signal support in most places appears to be an afterthought and is supported via unofficial hacks like https://github.com/AsamK/signal-cli/ which are a pain to use. I've already wasted hours messing with signal-cli. I appreciate their efforts but it's fundamentally unreliable.
My entire org uses Signal but we are locked out from using it with any kind of agent or automated system which is a major blocker. Instead we get features like Stories which feels like an attempt to compete with consumer apps like Snapchat.
What am I missing?
Edit: An example of a great project that would work much better with native Signal implementation is https://github.com/louislam/uptime-kuma