First Conversation

Start the bot

uv run openshrimp

You should see log output indicating the bot is running and connected to Telegram.

Send a message

Open Telegram and send any message to your bot. For example:

What files are in this project?

The bot will:

Start a Claude session in your default context’s working directory
Stream the response back to Telegram as it’s generated
Claude may call tools (Read, Glob, Grep, Bash, etc.) to explore your codebase

Tool approval

When Claude wants to use a tool that isn’t auto-approved, you’ll see an inline keyboard with options:

Allow — approve this specific tool call
Deny — reject the tool call (Claude will try a different approach)
Accept all <prefix> — auto-approve all future calls matching this prefix for the session (e.g. “Accept all git” for Bash commands)
Accept all <tool> — auto-approve all future calls of this tool type for the session

For Edit and Write tools within your project directory, you’ll also see:

Accept all edits — auto-approve all future Edit/Write calls within the context directory for the session

Multi-turn conversation

The bot maintains a persistent session. Follow-up messages continue the same conversation — Claude remembers the full context of what you’ve discussed.

To start fresh:

/clear

Useful commands

Command	What it does
`/status`	Show current context, model, session, and running state
`/context`	List available contexts or switch to a different one
`/cancel`	Abort a running Claude task
`/model opus`	Switch to a different model for this session

See the full Commands reference for all available commands.

Forum topics

If your bot is in a Telegram group with forum topics enabled, each topic gets its own independent session — separate context, conversation history, and approval state. The bot responds to all messages in forum topics without needing @mentions.

Next steps

You’re up and running! Explore the Guides to learn about multi-project contexts, sandboxed execution, scheduled tasks, and more.