Tia on Telegram and WhatsApp

What this page is for: talk to Tia from your phone. Link your own Telegram or WhatsApp to this server and write to her there — "is the shop OK?", "deploy the blog", "why is the site slow?" — in your own words and your own language. She answers with the same tools as in the panel, asks you the same approvals, and every change she makes is on the Activity page, marked as asked from Telegram or WhatsApp.

You need

• SixPanel Pro — Tia is an AI feature (see Your AllsWeb account and SixPanel Pro), and a provider with an API key on AI → Providers.
• The panel open, on AI → Chat apps.
• For Telegram: the Telegram app. For WhatsApp: a Meta (Facebook) business account, and the panel on its own domain (Security → Access).

Everything is on AI → Chat apps, one card for each app. The Settings → Alerts page has one more card: the same alerts as the alert email, sent to a chat you linked.

Telegram

Telegram needs a bot of your own, made for this server. It takes a minute.

1. In Telegram, open @BotFather, send /newbot and answer its two questions: a name, then a username that ends in bot. It answers with a token — a line like 123456789:AA….
2. On AI → Chat apps → Telegram, paste the token and press Connect the bot. The panel asks Telegram who the bot is before it keeps the token, and it never shows the token again — only its last four characters.
3. Press Link my Telegram (see Linking your chat below).

Nothing on this server listens for Telegram: the panel asks Telegram for new messages itself, with one request that waits up to 50 seconds for a message. An idle bot costs about one request a minute. With no bot set up, nothing runs at all.

Make a new bot for SixPanel rather than reuse one another program uses. A bot that already sends its messages somewhere else (a webhook) is refused when you paste its token, and two servers cannot share one bot — each would take the other's messages. Give each server its own bot.

WhatsApp

WhatsApp goes through WhatsApp's own Business Cloud API, from Meta: your Meta app, a business phone number and a permanent token. SixPanel never uses a "WhatsApp Web" program that drives a phone's session — WhatsApp bans numbers that are used that way.

The panel needs its own domain first (Security → Access): Meta sends messages only to an https address with a real certificate, and that address is the panel's domain. Until there is one, the WhatsApp card says so.

1. On developers.facebook.com, make an app of type Business and add the WhatsApp product. Give it a phone number that is not used in the WhatsApp app — or try everything first with the test number Meta gives you.
2. In Meta Business settings → System users, make a system user, give it the app and your WhatsApp account, and generate a token that does not expire, with the permissions whatsapp_business_messaging and whatsapp_business_management. (The token on the app's API Setup page lasts only a day.)
3. On AI → Chat apps → WhatsApp, paste the Phone number ID (WhatsApp → API Setup in your Meta app), the permanent access token and the App secret (App settings → Basic), and press Save. The panel asks Meta for the number before it keeps them.
4. Press Show the webhook address. In your Meta app, WhatsApp → Configuration → Webhook: paste the Callback URL and the Verify token, press Verify and save, then subscribe to messages. The card says verified by Meta once Meta has checked it.
5. Press Link my WhatsApp (below).

The webhook address carries a key only this server and your Meta app know, and every message Meta sends is signed with your App secret — the panel refuses one whose signature does not match before it reads a word of it. The address and the verify token alone let nothing in; the App secret is never shown again. Make a new webhook address (under Change the WhatsApp settings) replaces both; paste the new ones into your Meta app afterwards.

The 24-hour window

WhatsApp lets a business write freely for 24 hours after your last message. Tia's answers always fall inside it — you just wrote to her. An alert may not: after 24 hours of quiet, WhatsApp accepts only a message template Meta approved.

So for alerts on WhatsApp, make one template in WhatsApp Manager: category Utility, one variable in its body — for example SixPanel alert: {{1}} — and write its name and language on the WhatsApp card under Alerts outside the 24-hour window. The alert goes into the variable, on one line. Without a template, an alert outside the window is not sent, and the chat's row says so. Each linked chat's row shows whether its window is open and until when; any message from you opens it again.

Linking your chat

Tia answers only the chats you linked. To link yours:

1. Press Link my Telegram or Link my WhatsApp. The panel shows a one-time code, like ABCD-2345, that lives ten minutes.
2. Send it from your own phone: in Telegram, press Open Telegram (it opens your bot with the code ready) or send /link ABCD-2345 to the bot; in WhatsApp, press Open WhatsApp or send link ABCD-2345 to the business number.
3. The card turns green — Linked — and Tia greets you in the chat.

The panel keeps only a fingerprint of the code, never the code. Five wrong codes use the live one up, and you make a new one. Up to five chats can be linked for each app (your phone and a second account of yours, say). A Telegram chat is linked by your chat and your account together, private chats only — a group is never answered. Unlink on a chat's row, or /unlink in the chat, ends it.

Anyone who can open a linked account can ask Tia to change this server. Keep that account locked: turn on Telegram's two-step verification, and WhatsApp's.

Talking to Tia in a chat

Write as you would in the panel. While she works, Telegram shows her typing; a long job (a deploy, a backup) is said once — Working on it — and her answer comes when she is done, with the steps she took on its first line: ✓ 3 steps · Server status, Read logs, Deploy. Under an answer, her ideas for what to ask next are buttons in Telegram; in WhatsApp, reply 1, 2 or 3.

Commands (in WhatsApp the same words work without the /):

/status, /sites and /alerts read the server with Tia's own tools; they cost nothing from your AI budget.

Each chat is a conversation on the AI page too — named Telegram: … or WhatsApp: … — so you can read it, or carry on, in the panel.

Approving from the chat

A change waits for your approval as your Ask mode / Auto mode says (see Tia, the assistant). The request arrives in the chat with Approve and Decline, and in the panel's bell at the same time — answer it in either place. It says what will happen, whether it can be taken back, and what exactly will run; it waits 30 minutes.

Some requests are approved in the panel only, and the chat offers Decline and says why:

• one that needs your 2FA code or admin password — a root command, for one: those never go into a chat app;
• one that needs a word typed to confirm it;
• one too long to show whole in a chat, or one that holds something that is never sent to a chat app.

Changes that cannot be taken back may be approved here is on by default. Switch it off and a delete, a restore or a reboot asked from that app waits for you in the panel — the chat can then only decline it.

What never goes into a chat

• Passwords and keys are never typed into a chat app. There is no secure field there, so Tia does not ask for one; she tells you to set it in the panel, on the page that takes it, or to ask her there (AI → Tia).
• Nothing secret is sent to a chat: everything Tia writes there passes the same masking as her answers in the panel, and the panel's address and entry code are never in it.
• A message that reaches the server more than ten minutes late — the panel was restarting, the phone was offline — is not acted on; Tia asks you to send it again.
• Twenty messages in ten minutes is the most one chat may send.

Every change Tia makes from a chat is on the Activity page, marked AI — hover the badge: Tia on Telegram or Tia on WhatsApp. An approval you gave in a chat is a row of its own, approved on Telegram.

Alerts

Settings → Alerts → Alerts in Telegram and WhatsApp — and the Alerts switch on each linked chat's row on AI → Chat apps — send the same alerts as the alert email to that chat: a failed job, a full disk, a service that stopped, a lockout, monitoring's incidents. They work with or without an alert email set up. Send a test checks one chat. Each row shows when the last alert went and what the app answered.

On WhatsApp, an alert outside the 24-hour window needs your template (see The 24-hour window).

If you also added the same Telegram chat as a channel under Server → Monitoring, you get monitoring's alerts twice — remove one of the two.

If something goes wrong

Remove on an app's card takes its settings and its linked chats away from this server. Delete the bot in @BotFather, or the app on developers.facebook.com, yourself if you do not want them any more.