OpenClaw

OpenClaw is a self-hosted gateway that connects one agent to many chat channels. Set the platform up once, then plug in each channel. Telegram is below, and other channels follow the same shape. It assumes the coa CLI is on your PATH and ffmpeg is installed.

Set up the platform

Install OpenClaw and its gateway

npm install -g openclaw
openclaw onboard          # first-time setup: credentials, model, channels
openclaw gateway install

The gateway is the always-on background service every channel connects to.

A terminal showing npm install -g openclaw completing cleanly

Pick a model

For an OpenAI account, install the Codex harness plugin:

openclaw plugins install clawhub:@openclaw/codex --accept-capabilities

For Claude:

openclaw models set anthropic/claude-sonnet-5
openclaw models auth login --provider anthropic

Connect a channel

Create a Telegram bot

Message BotFather in Telegram, send /newbot, and copy the token it hands back. Then add it to ~/.openclaw/openclaw.json:

"channels": {
  "telegram": { "enabled": true, "botToken": "<YOUR_BOT_TOKEN>" }
}

The BotFather conversation in Telegram creating a new bot and returning its token

Restart the gateway

openclaw gateway restart
openclaw channels status

The channel does not initialize until the gateway restarts, and skipping this is the most common reason "it isn't working". channels status should report Telegram as enabled and running.

Pair yourself

Open your bot in Telegram, press Start, and send any message. The reply is a pairing code rather than an answer. Approve it:

openclaw pairing list telegram
openclaw pairing approve telegram <CODE>

Codes expire after an hour, and the first approved sender becomes the command owner. Every later sender goes through the same approval, so the bot stays yours.

Ask for a video

Message the bot like you would any chat: point it at a project, or ask it to create one. It plans, edits, and renders through the same coa CLI loop as a terminal agent, and sends the finished MP4 back in the chat.

The agent behind the gateway still needs the coa skill. The desktop app's menu install covers Claude Code and Codex on the same machine; for any other harness, put SKILL.md in a coa-cli/ folder inside its skills directory.

A Telegram chat where the OpenClaw agent scopes a product intro video and starts building it in CoAnimator

Host requirements

This is an external gateway recipe, not a built-in CoAnimator channel. Install CoAnimator, FFmpeg/FFprobe and the coa command on the machine running the agent, and give it access to the project and the coa skill. Headless Linux hosts also need a display server as described in CLI. Provider commands, supported models and chat attachment limits follow the gateway's own version and configuration.

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