Claude Code's Official Telegram Plugin: Setup Notes and Migration from OpenClaw

What This Is

Claude Code now has an official Telegram integration that functions as an alternative to OpenClaw for remote project management. The integration allows developers to interact with their Claude Code instances via Telegram bots.

How the Telegram Integration Works

The setup process involves:

• Using BotFather to create a new bot and obtain a token
• Configuring Claude Code to use that token as a channel
• When Claude Code is running on your machine (local or server), messages to your bot hit the Claude Code instance directly, with responses appearing in the chat

The experience is described as close to OpenClaw — you can send messages from your phone, get responses, trigger tasks, and check projects.

Key Differences from OpenClaw

The main advantage is official support: "no more worrying about Anthropic policy changes breaking your setup mid-project."

Performance improvements noted:

• Token efficiency is much better — running OpenClaw with Anthropic models was consuming approximately 3 times more subscription tokens per week compared to Claude Code
• Communication is cleaner — OpenClaw would sometimes surface many internal processing steps, while Claude Code doesn't do that

Setup Challenges and Migration Solution

The setup process "isn't fully smooth" — the developer encountered several minor issues during migration. They documented the entire process and open-sourced it as a migration skill on GitHub.

The migration skill handles:

• BotFather setup walkthrough
• Claude Code channel configuration
• Migrating all existing skills, MCPs, and environment files
• Transferring memories and Claude.md documentation from old setups

The skill is "Agent First" — you hand it to your current agent and let it run the migration, with prompts for human steps when needed.

Note: The skill by default allows bypass permissions so Telegram interactions won't trigger too many permission request windows.