Connect Telegram

Chat with Hermes from your phone using Telegram.

Hermes has a great desktop app, but I mostly talk to it on my phone using Telegram.

Let’s set it up on Telegram first.

Create a Telegram bot

1. Install Telegram

You can install Telegram on your Mac , iPhone , or Android . I like having it installed on both desktop and mobile.

After you install Telegram, open it and create an account using your main phone number.

We’ll set up Hermes separately in the next step.

2. Message @BotFather to make a bot

Now in the Telegram search box, look for @BotFather and open it.

BotFather is Telegram’s official bot-creation bot. Yes, the name is ridiculous. In the new bot dialog, fill in:

Display name: This is the actual name displayed in Telegram.
Username: This must be unique and end in bot, like zoe_bot. This username won’t be displayed in Telegram.
Photo: This is optional, but I like to generate an image with ChatGPT Images or Gemini Nano Banana, or just find an image online, to give the bot some personality.

My recommendation: Go to ChatGPT and tell it something like, “Create a square image of a personal assistant that I can use as the profile image for my Telegram bot.”

Once you’re done, hit Create Bot.

Telegram BotFather screen for creating a new bot

When you finish, BotFather will give you a bot token that looks like this:


123456789:ABCdefGHIjklMNOpqrSTUvwxYZ

Important: Copy and save both your bot token and your bot’s username, like zoe_bot, in your notepad. You’ll need both in a later step.

3. Get your user ID

Next, Hermes needs to know who is allowed to talk to your bot. Search for and message @userinfobot on Telegram. It will reply with your numeric user ID:

Telegram userinfobot showing a numeric user ID

It should look like a number like:

123456789

Save this number in your notepad too.

4. Connect Telegram in Hermes

Go back to Hermes Desktop, select Messaging, and choose Telegram.

Paste in:

Your bot token
Your numeric Telegram user ID

Hit Save Changes.

Hermes Desktop Telegram settings showing bot token and allowed Telegram user ID fields

5. Search for your bot and test it

Go to Telegram and search for your bot’s username, like zoe_bot. If you forgot your bot’s username, you can open BotFather again to find it.

Once you find your bot, send it a message and you should see this:

Telegram chat with Hermes bot replying after setup

Once the bot replies, tell Hermes this Telegram chat is your home channel by typing:


/sethome

This matters later. Scheduled jobs like your morning briefing need somewhere to send results.

If you followed all the steps above, your bot should be officially working in Telegram. Now you can chat with it from both desktop and mobile in one thread.

Troubleshooting

If you get stuck in any step above, my best advice is to just message Hermes on the desktop app, explain what’s wrong, and ask for help.

One common issue is that you may have to restart the Hermes gateway for the bot to work on Telegram. To do this, go to Hermes Desktop and type:


/restart

Or:


restart gateway

Hit Run if Hermes asks you for permission to restart.

Don’t worry if you don’t know what a gateway even is. Now that you’ve set up Hermes on Telegram, let’s take a look at how it actually works behind the scenes.