🧪 Beta — expect bugs. This feature is new and still rough: onboarding steps or tool calls can misbehave. Set it up at your own risk and don't lean on it for anything critical yet. Feedback and issues welcome.
Iva can read and send from your personal Telegram account (a userbot), not just
the bot. It talks to a small proxy — services/telegram-userbot/serve.py — that owns
one Telethon session and exposes Telegram over MCP on 127.0.0.1. Iva connects to it
natively (agent/connections/telegram-userbot.ts).
⚠️ Account-ban risk. Automating a personal account violates Telegram's ToS and can get the account banned — especially for sending. Reading is far safer.A built-in anti-ban guardrail is enforced server-side (
guardrails.py) — not just advice: FloodWait compliance (wait ×1.3, retry once), a randomized delay after every send (fixed-interval bots get flagged), and a circuit-breaker that pauses sending after 3 FloodWaits in 24h. It wrapssend_message,send_fileandforward_messages— the agent cannot talk past those. Raw-API writes (joins, invites, contact imports, reactions) are not wrapped: their limits live in the skill file, which is a prompt, so treat them as advisory. Limits are still per-account, so behave like a human. Full rules:agent/skills/telegram-userbot/safety.md.
You never touch a terminal. Tell the bot «подключи мой телеграм» and it does everything for you, in chat:
- It warns you (at your own risk) and, the first time, walks you through creating an app at
https://my.telegram.org → API development tools — you paste the
api_id/api_hashback into the chat. The agent provisions the proxy for you (builds its venv, starts the service) via its host shell — no restart of iva needed. - It renders a QR and sends it as an image into your chat. Scan it in the Telegram app of the account you're connecting: Settings → Devices → Link Desktop Device.
- If you have 2FA, it asks for your password (change it afterward if you'd rather it not pass through chat). Done — the session persists on the server, so this is one-time.
Warning
Whatever you type in the chat is stored verbatim in that day's daily/ log, api_hash and
2FA password included, and it passes through the model like any other message. After
connecting, delete those lines from the daily file — and if you sent a 2FA password, change
it. There is no separate secure channel for this yet.
iva userbot creds # read api_id + api_hash from stdin → .env (two lines)
iva userbot setup # build venv, generate the token, enable + start the proxy (idempotent)
iva userbot status # shared service, proxy and Telegram-login health
iva userbot diagnose --json # read-only machine-readable health
iva userbot off # stop and disable the proxyThe health state is one of off, starting, unreachable, unauthorized or
ready. CLI and Telegram use the same 1.5-second probe. It checks the existing
proxy's /healthz route, which reads authorization from the proxy's one live
Telethon client and never opens another session. Diagnostics expose only fixed
state/reason values; bearer tokens and transport errors are not returned.
TELEGRAM_EXPOSED_TOOLS=read-onlyin.env— the agent can read/search but physically cannot send or mutate (the proxy prunes all write tools). Onboarding still works.TELEGRAM_MCP_PORT(default8724),TELEGRAM_USERBOT_QR_CHAT_ID(defaults to the first ofTELEGRAM_ALLOWED_USER_IDS). The default needs no config. If you set a custom port, runiva userbot setup(restarts the proxy) andiva restart(iva reads the port from its env at start) so both agree.- The proxy bearer lives in
data/telegram-userbot.token(0600), read at runtime by both the proxy and iva — so the agent can provision the proxy mid-chat without restarting iva.
- One session owner. Exactly one process may own a Telethon session; a second opener desyncs MTProto. The proxy is that owner; iva calls it over HTTP.
- Session-less boot. With no session yet, the proxy comes up unauthorized (onboarding mode) and serves only login tools until you scan the QR — then the same live client becomes authorized in place, no restart.
- Enforced anti-ban.
guardrails.pywraps the outbound methods (send_message,send_file,forward_messages) with FloodWait compliance, randomized pacing, and a circuit-breaker (3 FloodWaits in 24h → sending pauses). - Built on chigwell/telegram-mcp
v3.2.0(116 tools), pinned inservices/telegram-userbot/requirements.txt.
