Prepare the owner account and groups
Use a compatible Mind on Core 0.20.8 or later and an authorised owner who can install the selected Telegram Sensor and grant its connection. Decide which groups may be captured and who may read their inbox destination.
Use a bot dedicated to this job. Another program reading its updates or an existing webhook can prevent the sensor from working. Explain the capture arrangement to the people responsible for the chats before adding the bot.
Create and scope the bot
In Telegram, message @BotFather and use /newbot. Keep the returned token out of chats, email and saved records. Enter it only into the protected connection form in your Mind.
Use /setprivacy, choose the bot and select Disable before adding it to the intended groups so it can see ordinary group messages. If it was added first, remove and add it again. Add it only to the groups you approved. Then use /setjoingroups and select Disable to stop other people adding it to further groups.
Store and test the connection
In the Portal, open Settings → Connections. Add the connection with name telegram, type API key, base URL https://api.telegram.org, provider telegram, and the bot token in Secret. Choose Test and inspect the result.
The credential stays sealed in the connection store; the app uses the supported connection route. A passing test establishes that the connection can reach Telegram, not that the sensor is installed or has read any group.
Install and check a scheduled capture
Open Agents → Agent store, choose the selected Telegram Sensor bundle and follow its reviewed installation. Grant the telegram connection and inspect the installed schedule. The selected schedule is every 10 minutes; check the actual installed value.
Send one harmless new message in an approved group. After a normal scheduled run, inspect the app outcome and the capture under 01-inbox/captures/telegram/. Captures may save or wait for review according to your Mind’s review rules. If a sensor’s proposals keep failing the automatic checks, its trust can be lowered so that every capture waits for review, so check the review queue when captures seem missing. Open the saved capture before declaring the setup complete.
Understand what is captured
The bot sees the groups, supergroups and channels to which it has access. Private messages are accepted only from people who have already written in a captured group. The sensor captures text, captions and markers for media; it does not download the attached files. Messages from other bots are excluded, except posts made as an anonymous group admin or from a linked channel, which Telegram sends under the group or channel rather than a person. Every group, supergroup and channel the bot can see is captured, so keep the bot in the approved chats only.
Each run saves at most 20 notes, and any remaining messages are picked up on a following run. The sensor shares the connection’s daily call quota of 1,500 calls, which its scheduled runs stay well inside.
It cannot recover messages from before the bot joined. Telegram retains unread updates for about a day, so an extended outage can leave a gap. Keep that limit in mind when deciding whether capture is suitable for an important record.
Repair without exposing the token
Check the stored connection, app grant, installed schedule, normal run and waiting proposal. A webhook conflict needs the dedicated bot arrangement corrected. If a token was pasted into an agent conversation or shared record, revoke it through BotFather and put the replacement in the protected form.
An agent can help inspect non-secret connection status and saved captures within the person’s access. It does not need the token in the conversation. The sensor procedure provides its status and readback checks.
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