Why is my Telegram bot not sending anything?

Almost always because nobody has talked to it yet. Telegram does not let a bot start a conversation — a user has to message it, or add it to the group, before it can send. Do that, then re-check the channel in FishOut.

How do I get alerts into a Telegram group rather than a private chat?

Add the bot to the group and send one message there, which is what makes the group visible to the bot. Read the chat id from that update and put it in the sendMessage URL. Bear in mind a bot is limited to 20 messages a minute in a group, so a high relevance floor matters more here than anywhere else.

What relevance floor should I use for Telegram?

Higher than for Slack — 85 or 90 is a reasonable start. A phone notification is the most expensive interruption you have, and the usual failure is not too few alerts, it is someone muting the bot and nobody noticing the channel has effectively stopped.

My group became a supergroup and alerts stopped. What happened?

The chat identifier changed. Telegram reports this with migrate_to_chat_id when it happens; deliveries to the old id fail and show up in the channel’s history. Put the new chat id in the channel’s sendMessage URL and send a test.

Do I need to turn off privacy mode?

No. Privacy mode restricts what a bot can read in a group, not what it can send. An alerts bot only sends, so the default is fine — and leaving it on is the more conservative choice.

IntegrationsPersonal chat

Brand mentions on your phone, via Telegram

Q: Which plan includes Telegram alerts?

Every plan, including Free. All thirteen providers — Telegram, Slack, Discord, Microsoft Teams, Google Chat, Mattermost, ntfy, Feishu/Lark, DingTalk, WeCom, email, webhooks and Zapier — are included on every plan.

Telegram is where founders want the most relevant posts — on the phone, immediately, without opening anything. It is also among the fiddliest providers to connect, and the reason is worth understanding before you start.

Start free Read the alerts docs

Every alert channel is on every plan, including Free.

[01] WHAT LANDS THERE/ A CHAT OR GROUP

A mention, as it arrives in Telegram

Rendered by the code that sends it, from a sample Hacker News post. Never the post body.

Acme founders · group

@AcmeFishOutBotnow

Reply, carefully: a relevant post on Hacker News

We moved off AcmeMail last month: the shared inbox fell over above 300 a day

Relevance 91 · Brand · Negative · by threadbare

Hint: Lead with help, don't pitch

Labels: Complaint

Open in FishOut

[02] CONNECT IT/ SETUP

Point FishOut at a chat or group

5 steps, a few minutes end to end.

1
Create a bot with BotFather
Message @BotFather in Telegram and send /newbot. It asks for a name and a username and hands back a token shaped like a numeric id, a colon, then a secret. Keep it safe — anyone holding it controls the bot.
bot token (telegram’s own example)
```
110201543:AAHdqTcvCH1vGWJxfSeofSAs0K5PALDsaw
```
2
Talk to the bot first
This is the step that traps people, and it is a deliberate Telegram rule rather than a bug: bots cannot start conversations. A user has to message the bot, or add it to the group, before it can send anything back. Do that now, or nothing later will work.
3
Find the chat id
Call getUpdates on the Bot API and read the chat id out of the update your message produced. For a group, add the bot to the group and send one message there first.
bot api
```
https://api.telegram.org/bot<token>/getUpdates
```
4
Paste the sendMessage URL into FishOut
Under Settings → Notifications, add a Telegram channel and paste the bot’s sendMessage URL with the chat id on it. The token is in the URL, so treat the whole thing as a credential.
destination
```
https://api.telegram.org/bot<token>/sendMessage?chat_id=<id>
```
5
Set a high relevance floor
Higher than you would for Slack. A phone notification is the most expensive interruption there is, and Telegram will only carry 20 messages a minute into a group anyway. 85 or 90 is a sensible starting point, and burst batching — on by default — turns a busy five minutes into one message.

Then set the floor

Telegram is the channel where the relevance floor is least negotiable. Everywhere else a low floor produces a channel nobody reads; here it produces a phone that buzzes through dinner, which people fix by muting the bot — and a muted bot is a channel that has silently stopped working. Set it at 85 or 90 and let the inbox carry the rest.

Settings · Notifications

https://api.telegram.org/…

Healthy

Relevance floor85

Eventsmention.scored

Batch bursts5 min

[03] WHAT IS IN IT/ FIELDS

What Telegram receives, field by field

Built from the event’s envelope and nothing else, so a retry renders exactly the message the first attempt would have.

Field		How
Headline	Shown	Bold, in HTML parse mode — no MarkdownV2 escaping to get wrong.
Post title	Clipped	A link, clipped at 200 characters. Link previews are off.
Relevance, subject, sentiment, author	Shown	One plain line; it is also what the lock screen previews.
Reply hint and labels	Shown	Each on its own line.
Open in FishOut	Shown	A link to the mention, where the drafted reply waits.
Post body	Never	Never sent: the envelope does not carry it.

[04] TEN PINGS OR ONE/ DIGEST

A burst arrives as one message

Telegram batches by default. Here 12 posts were held after the first; they arrive together when the window closes, best first.

Acme founders · group · 5-min digest

@AcmeFishOutBot+5m

Spike: “acmemail” — 34 posts today, usually 6 · 12 new mentions for AcmeMail

Launch HN: AcmeMail, a shared inbox that sorts by urgency · Hacker News · 98
How does this compare with Notchmail for a team of four? · Hacker News · 91
Ask HN: Anyone running AcmeMail with a self-hosted mail server? · Hacker News · 88
Show HN: An AcmeMail export to Markdown tool · Hacker News · 76
AcmeMail pricing page is clearer than most · Hacker News · 71
and 7 more

Open in FishOut

[05] WHAT WILL BITE YOU/ LIMITS

Telegram’s limits, not ours

These are Telegram’s constraints and failure modes, checked against the Bot API documentation and the official bots FAQ. Failures are tracked per channel, so one broken destination never stops the others.

A bot cannot message you first. Telegram is explicit: a user must add the bot to a group or send it a message before it can send anything. Skip that and the connection looks configured and delivers nothing. [source]

In a group, a bot cannot send more than 20 messages per minute. In any single chat the guidance is roughly one message per second, and going over eventually returns 429. [source]

A message is capped at 4,096 characters after entities are parsed. FishOut sends the post’s title and a link, never the body, so it stays well under. [source]

MarkdownV2 requires escaping a long list of characters that includes the full stop and the hyphen — so an unescaped URL, version number or timestamp will be rejected. It is the most common reason a hand-rolled Telegram integration returns 400. [source]

If a group is upgraded to a supergroup its identifier changes. Telegram signals this with migrate_to_chat_id, and the old chat id stops working — update the chat id in the channel’s URL. [source]

Privacy mode is on by default, which limits what a bot in a group can read. It does not affect sending, so an alerts bot needs nothing turned off. [source]

In the channel’s delivery history
You see	It means	Do this
telegram_unauthorized	The bot token in the URL is wrong or was revoked in BotFather.	Generate a new token and update the sendMessage URL.
telegram_chat_not_found	Nobody has talked to the bot, or the chat id changed.	Message the bot or add it to the group, then re-read the chat id.
telegram_bot_removed	The bot was blocked or kicked from the chat.	Unblock it, or add it back to the group.
telegram_missing_rights	The bot may not post in that channel or topic.	Give the bot permission to post messages.