sase-telegram 0.1.0

Telegram integration chop for sase

sase-telegram — Telegram Integration Chop for sase

Overview

sase-telegram is a plugin for sase that provides two-way Telegram integration. It sends notifications to Telegram when you're away from the TUI, and lets you respond to plan approvals, HITL requests, user questions, and even launch new agents — all from Telegram.

Installation

pip install sase-telegram

Or with uv:

uv pip install sase-telegram

Requires sase>=0.1.0 as a dependency (installed automatically).

What's Included

CLI Scripts

Installing sase-telegram adds the following commands:

Command	Description
sase_chop_tg_outbound	Send pending notifications to Telegram (supports --dry-run)
sase_chop_tg_inbound	Poll Telegram for user responses and process them

Supported Notification Types

Type	Telegram Behavior
Plan Approval	Shows plan content with Tale / ✅ Approve / Epic / Legend / Reject / Feedback buttons
HITL Request	Shows request notes with Accept / Reject / Feedback buttons
User Question	Shows question with dynamic option buttons + Custom input
Workflow Complete	Sends a summary message with diff/chat attachments and a Fork copy button
Agent Launched	Shows provider/model label, workspace number, prompt snippet, and Fork / Wait / Kill / Retry buttons
Agent Killed	Confirms termination with a Redo copy button to re-launch with the same prompt
Error Digest	Sends error summary with digest file attachments
Image Generated	Sends model name and generated image inline

Features

• Activity-aware sending — only sends when SASE's TUI idle state says you're inactive
• Rate limiting — sliding-window rate limiter prevents message flooding
• Exclusive outbound locking — prevents concurrent outbound runs from duplicating sends
• Two-step feedback — press a Feedback/Custom button, then type your response
• Agent launching — send a text message to spawn a new sase agent from Telegram
• Auto-naming — agents launched from Telegram automatically get assigned names
• xprompt expansion — agent prompts expand xprompt references (e.g. #mentor)
• Multi-model directives — use %m(opus,sonnet) to launch the same prompt across multiple models
• Copy-text buttons — Fork, Wait, Retry, Redo, plan, and ChangeSpec buttons copy pre-filled text to your clipboard
• Photo/document handling — send photos, albums, or image documents to launch agents with visual context
• Slash commands — /list, /kill [<name>], /fork, /changes [project], /xprompts, /bead [<id>], /update for agent management, ChangeSpec, xprompt, bead, and SASE update workflows from Telegram (registered with set_my_commands so they show up in the chat input UI)
• PDF attachments — Markdown attachments are rendered to PDF through the shared SASE renderer when possible
• Large content handling — auto-truncates long plans and notes; uses expandable blockquotes for medium content
• Message splitting — messages exceeding Telegram's 4096-character limit are automatically split
• Parse mode fallback — falls back to plain text if MarkdownV2 rendering fails

Configuration

Credentials

Source	Description
pass show telegram_sase_bot_token	Bot token (retrieved from pass)
SASE_TELEGRAM_BOT_CHAT_ID	Chat ID to send messages to
SASE_TELEGRAM_BOT_USERNAME	Bot username

Environment Variables

Variable	Default	Description
SASE_TELEGRAM_RATE_LIMIT	8/15	Rate limit as max_messages/window_seconds
SASE_TELEGRAM_LAUNCH_AGENTS_DISABLED	unset	When present with any value, inbound callbacks, feedback, and slash commands still work, but plain text/photo/image-document messages do not launch agents.

Note: Idle detection is handled by sase's TUI process (which writes an idle state file). The outbound script reads this state — there is no separate inactivity threshold to configure in sase-telegram.

How It Works

Outbound

The outbound script acquires an exclusive file lock (to prevent concurrent runs from duplicating sends), checks if you're inactive (via sase's TUI activity tracking), loads unsent notifications using a high-water mark timestamp, and formats them as Telegram MarkdownV2 messages with inline keyboards. Long plans are wrapped in expandable blockquotes or truncated and paired with a document attachment. Chat file attachments are trimmed to just the response portion, with commit messages and diffs embedded into the response PDF when possible. Actionable notifications (plan approvals, HITL requests, user questions) are saved as pending actions for the inbound script to match against.

Inbound

The inbound script fetches Telegram button presses, text messages, and photo/document uploads. It processes inline keyboard callbacks (approve/run/reject/select/epic/legend, agent controls, and bead pickers), handles two-step feedback flows (Feedback/Custom button followed by a reply or single active text response), and writes response files for sase to pick up. Text messages that don't complete a feedback flow are dispatched as follows:

• Slash commands (/list, /kill [<name>], /fork, /changes [project], /xprompts, /bead [<id>], /update) — agent management, ChangeSpec workflow tag lookup, xprompt catalog export, bead inspection, and SASE updates
• Other slash commands (/start, unknown commands, etc.) — silently ignored
• Everything else — launches a new sase agent with the message as the prompt

Agent launches expand xprompt references, support multi-model directives, and auto-assign names. Launch confirmation messages include Fork and Wait copy-text buttons plus Kill and Retry controls for quick follow-up actions.

Photos and image documents launch agents with prompts that reference the downloaded local image path. Telegram albums are staged briefly and then launched as one prompt containing a numbered list of all downloaded image paths, so prompt image discovery can surface every file later.

Set SASE_TELEGRAM_LAUNCH_AGENTS_DISABLED on hosts that should process Telegram callbacks, feedback, and slash commands without launching new agents from free-form text, photos, image documents, or albums. The check is presence-based, so an empty value still disables launches; ignored launch messages are logged without a Telegram acknowledgement.

/changes lists active ChangeSpecs, excluding Submitted, Archived, and Reverted entries. Use /changes <project> to filter by exact project name. Each result has a copy-text button for the bare workflow tag, such as #hg:foobar.

/bead lists active beads across all known SASE projects as picker buttons. /bead <id> runs sase bead show <id>, converts the output to Telegram MarkdownV2, and sends the bead details in chat. If SASE_TELEGRAM_BEAD_PROJECT is set, bead commands are narrowed to that project workspace. Without the override, detail lookup searches known projects and prefers the chat-scoped project remembered from recent Telegram launch context.

/update starts the shared SASE chat update worker in a detached process and immediately replies with the worker log path. The worker stops axe, syncs the primary SASE workspace, runs chat_install.command from that workspace, and attempts to start axe again even when sync or install fails. After the worker exits, the next inbound run sends a completion message that reports success or the failure exit code and includes the worker log path.

Slash command registration is cached in ~/.sase/telegram/commands_registered_ts, but the cache includes a fingerprint of the command list so renamed commands are registered immediately after deployment.

State Files

State files are stored under ~/.sase/telegram/:

File	Purpose
pending_actions.json	Pending notification, kill, retry, and bead callback context
rate_limit.json	Sliding-window send timestamps
update_offset.txt	Last processed Telegram update ID
awaiting_feedback.json	Active two-step feedback flow state, keyed by Telegram message
media_groups.json	Staged Telegram photo/image-document albums waiting for the quiet window
last_sent_ts	High-water mark for outbound notifications
outbound.lock	Exclusive lock for outbound process
outbound_debug.log	Diagnostic log for outbound sends
commands_registered_ts	Cached timestamp and fingerprint for Telegram slash command registration
images/	Downloaded photos and image documents from Telegram messages

Requirements

• Python 3.12+
• sase >= 0.1.0
• python-telegram-bot >= 21.0
• pass (for bot token retrieval)
• PDF tooling supported by SASE's shared Markdown renderer (optional, for PDF generation)

Development

just install    # Install in editable mode with dev deps
just fmt        # Auto-format code
just lint       # Run ruff + mypy
just test       # Run tests
just check      # All checks (lint + test)
just build      # Build distribution packages
just clean      # Remove build artifacts

Project Structure

src/sase_telegram/
├── __init__.py              # Package init
├── callback_data.py         # Encode/decode inline keyboard callback data (64-byte limit)
├── credentials.py           # Bot token (via pass), chat ID and username (env vars)
├── formatting.py            # Notification → Telegram MarkdownV2 formatting + inline keyboards
├── inbound.py               # Pure logic: callback decoding, two-step feedback, photo handling
├── bead_format.py           # Convert `sase bead` output to Markdown for Telegram rendering
├── outbound.py              # High-water mark tracking, exclusive lock, unsent detection
├── pending_actions.py       # Persist pending actions to JSON (24h stale cleanup)
├── rate_limit.py            # Sliding-window rate limiter (configurable via env var)
├── telegram_client.py       # Sync wrapper with retry/backoff and message splitting
├── pdf_convert.py           # Markdown to PDF via SASE's shared renderer
├── pdf_style.css            # CSS styling for rendered PDF output
└── scripts/
    ├── __init__.py           # Re-exports inbound_main and outbound_main
    ├── sase_tg_outbound.py   # Outbound entry point (--dry-run, --context)
    └── sase_tg_inbound.py    # Inbound entry point (--once, --context)

License

MIT