Channels

Let people talk to your agent on Telegram, Slack, or Discord

By default, the only way to talk to your agent is through the Pinata dashboard. Channels change that — connect Telegram, Slack, or Discord, and your agent shows up wherever you and your team already chat.

WhatsApp is on the roadmap; you’ll see its card grayed out as Coming Soon.

How it works

Open your agent → Channels. You’ll see one card per platform.

• A card with + ADD isn’t connected yet. Click it to open the setup dialog.
• A card with ENABLED is already connected. The card shows a summary (the DM policy and a masked bot token), and a RECONFIGURE button reopens the dialog so you can update settings without losing the connection.

Setup is the same shape for every platform: grab a bot token from the platform, paste it into the dialog, save. Some platforms need an extra token or an OAuth invite to a workspace/server.

Once a channel is enabled, anyone who messages your bot on that platform is talking to your agent. Responses come back through the same channel.

Telegram

This is the quickest. You need a bot token from Telegram’s BotFather.

1. In Telegram, message @BotFather
2. Send /newbot and follow the prompts
3. Copy the bot token BotFather gives you
4. In Pinata: agent → Channels → + ADD on the Telegram card
5. Paste the token and save

Controlling who can DM your bot

The Telegram dialog has two access controls:

• DM policy — open (anyone can message) or pairing (users must be approved first)
• Allow list — a list of Telegram user IDs that are allowed to message

You can use either or both. Leave both at their defaults if you want anyone to be able to chat.

Slack

Slack needs a custom app with the right permissions. It’s a few more steps but everything happens once.

1. Go to api.slack.com/apps and create a new app
2. Enable Socket Mode
3. Create an App-Level Token with the connections:write scope
4. Under OAuth & Permissions, add these bot token scopes: chat:write, im:write, im:history, im:read, users:read, app_mentions:read
5. Install the app to your workspace
6. In Pinata: agent → Channels → + ADD on the Slack card
7. Paste both tokens — bot token starts with xoxb-, app token starts with xapp-

Once connected, the bot responds to DMs and to @mentions in any channel it’s been invited to.

Discord

Same shape as Telegram — make a bot in Discord’s developer portal, copy the token, paste it in.

1. Go to discord.com/developers and create an application
2. Under Bot, click Add Bot and copy the token (you may need to reset it once to reveal it)
3. Under OAuth2 → URL Generator, check the bot scope and the permissions your bot needs
4. Open the generated URL to invite the bot to your server
5. In Pinata: agent → Channels → + ADD on the Discord card
6. Paste the bot token and save

Updating or removing a channel

• Reconfigure — click RECONFIGURE on an enabled channel. You can leave the token fields blank to keep the existing token while changing other settings.
• Remove — same dialog, Remove action. This deletes the channel config and restarts the agent’s gateway.

Channel changes take effect after the gateway restarts. Configure and remove handle that automatically. If you’re creating a Hermes agent via the API, pass a channels object on POST /v0/agents to wire them up at creation and avoid the post-create restart entirely — see API → Create an agent.

Bot tokens are sensitive. Keep them out of source control. They’re stored encrypted on Pinata’s side; treat them the same way locally.

When it doesn’t work

Symptom	What’s going on	What to do
Bot doesn’t respond	Gateway didn’t restart after configure	Open Danger → Restart Gateway
Slack works in DMs but not channels	Missing app_mentions:read scope	Reinstall the Slack app with the scopes above
Telegram users get no reply	dmPolicy is pairing and they aren’t paired yet	Switch to open, or approve them via Devices
403 when adding a channel	Plan limit or workspace permissions	Check your plan and workspace role

If none of these match, check Logs for entries from gateway/reload and the channel name, or walk through Troubleshooting.