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Channels are in research preview. They require Anthropic authentication through claude.ai or a Console API key, and are not available on Amazon Bedrock, Google Cloud’s Agent Platform, or Microsoft Foundry. Team and Enterprise organizations must explicitly enable them.
A channel is an MCP server that pushes events into your running Claude Code session, so Claude can react to things that happen while you’re not at the terminal. Channels can be two-way: Claude reads the event and replies back through the same channel, like a chat bridge. Events only arrive while the session is open, so for an always-on setup you run Claude in a background process or persistent terminal. Unlike integrations that spawn a fresh cloud session or wait to be polled, the event arrives in the session you already have open: see how channels compare. You install a channel as a plugin and configure it with your own credentials. Telegram, Discord, and iMessage are included in the research preview. When Claude replies through a channel, you see the inbound message in your terminal but not the reply text. The terminal shows the tool call and a confirmation (like “sent”), and the actual reply appears on the other platform. If you manage a Team, Enterprise, or Console organization, see Enable channels for your organization. To build your own channel, see the Channels reference.

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Supported channels

Each supported channel is a plugin that requires Bun. For a hands-on demo of the plugin flow before connecting a real platform, try the fakechat quickstart.
View the full Telegram plugin source.
1

Create a Telegram bot

Open BotFather in Telegram and send /newbot. Give it a display name and a unique username ending in bot. Copy the token BotFather returns.
2

Install the plugin

In Claude Code, run:
If the install fails, match the message Claude Code reports:
  • Marketplace "claude-plugins-official" not found: add the marketplace with /plugin marketplace add anthropics/claude-plugins-official, then retry the install.
  • The plugin is not found in the marketplace: check the plugin name.
When the install asks for an installation scope, choose the user scope option so the plugin is available across all your projects. Check the install summary: if it reports Run /reload-plugins to activate., run that command to activate the plugin’s configure command.
3

Configure your token

Run the configure command with the token from BotFather:
This saves it to ~/.claude/channels/telegram/.env. You can also set TELEGRAM_BOT_TOKEN in your shell environment before launching Claude Code.
4

Restart with channels enabled

Exit Claude Code and restart with the channel flag. This starts the Telegram plugin, which begins polling for messages from your bot: