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OpenShrimp

Telegram Setup

Create a bot with BotFather

Section titled “Create a bot with BotFather”
  1. Open Telegram and search for @BotFather
  2. Send /newbot
  3. Choose a display name (e.g. “My Claude”)
  4. Choose a username ending in bot (e.g. my_claude_bot)
  5. Copy the bot token — it looks like 123456789:ABCdefGHIjklMNOpqrsTUVwxyz
Section titled “Recommended bot settings”

While you’re in BotFather, configure these:

  • Threaded Mode — Settings → Bot Settings → Threads Settings → Threaded Mode, then turn it on. This is what unlocks parallel conversations (see below). Strongly recommended.
  • Privacy — /setprivacy and set to Disable. Lets the bot see every message in groups, which is required for forum topic support and for group chats to work without @mentions.
Section titled “Run conversations in parallel with Threaded Mode (strongly recommended)”

OpenShrimp comes alive when you can run more than one conversation at a time, and Threaded Mode is what makes that possible — even in a 1-on-1 private chat with the bot.

With Threaded Mode enabled in BotFather, your private chat with the bot can hold many separate threads. Each thread is an independent conversation with its own context, working directory, Claude session, and tool-approval state. Think one thread per project, per task, or per investigation.

Why this matters: without threads, every message lands in the same Claude session, so a long-running task blocks anything else you’d want to do. With threads, you can have Claude refactoring one repo while you ask it questions about another — neither conversation interferes with the other.

The same model extends to forum groups (a group with Topics enabled): each topic is a separate thread, and the bot responds to every message inside a topic without needing an @mention. Use a forum group if you want to share a workspace with other allowed users; otherwise a private chat with Threaded Mode is the simplest setup.

Find your Telegram user ID

Section titled “Find your Telegram user ID”

OpenShrimp only responds to users in the allowed_users list. To find your user ID:

  1. Open Telegram and search for @userinfobot
  2. Send any message
  3. It replies with your numeric user ID (e.g. 123456789)

Add this number to your config file’s allowed_users list.

Next steps

Section titled “Next steps”

Now configure the bot — see Configuration.