sase-telegram — Telegram Integration Chop for sase

Overview

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

Installation

For a managed SASE install, install sase-telegram into the same uv tool environment as sase so its CLI scripts are available to SASE's chop automation.

Recommended: SASE Admin Center Updates tab

If SASE is already installed with uv tool install sase, open sase ace, press # for the SASE Admin Center, then go to the Updates tab (5, or [ / ]). Highlight sase-telegram in the plugin list (j / k, or / to filter), press i to install, and confirm the preview modal. The preview shows the exact uv command and resolved package set; the install runs as a tracked background task and is discovered on the next sase run.

See the core SASE docs for the Updates tab and sase plugin commands.

Alternative: install SASE and the plugin together

uv tool install sase --with sase-telegram

Repeat --with for additional plugins, for example --with sase-telegram --with sase-github. Add --force to replace an existing tool install.

Equivalent CLI for an existing install

sase plugin install telegram

pip install sase-telegram is only an escape hatch for non-managed or library-style environments. It is not the normal path for a uv tool-managed SASE command.

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

What's Included

CLI Scripts

Installing sase-telegram adds the following commands:

Supported Notification Types

Features

• Outbound notifications — sends unread, non-silent SASE notifications to Telegram
• 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 | %m: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

Machine Enable Flag

The chops are no-ops unless ~/.sase/telegram_is_enabled exists. When the flag file is absent, sase_chop_tg_outbound and sase_chop_tg_inbound exit immediately with status 0, print nothing, and skip all heavy imports, network calls, and locks. This lets the telegram lumberjack be configured globally (on every machine) while only explicitly-enabled machines actually talk to Telegram.

Enable a machine with:

touch ~/.sase/telegram_is_enabled

Credentials

Bot token sources are checked in order:

The chat target and bot username are required separately:

Environment Variables

How It Works

Outbound

The outbound script acquires an exclusive file lock (to prevent concurrent runs from duplicating sends), 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/:

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 sources, chat ID, and username
├── 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