Telegram Bot

The Telegram Bot lets your team generate on-brand posts without leaving Telegram. Generation happens via the bot; reviewing and publishing still take place in the web app.

Commands

Command	Input	What it does
/generate <input>	Text prompt, X post URL, or article URL	Generates an on-brand post from the given input
/cancel	-	Cancels the active generation job
/help	-	Lists available commands

How /generate routes input

The bot inspects the text after /generate:

Input shape	What happens
https://x.com/.../status/… or https://twitter.com/.../status/…	The tweet is fetched and used as a topic for a Post Helper generation
Any other https://… URL	The article is fetched and summarised into a ready-to-post piece
Plain text	Treated as a topic and passed to Post Helper

The bot only responds in group chats that have been added to your org's allowlist. It never responds in DMs.

Deduplication is built in - sending the same request twice will not trigger a second generation.

Posts generated via the bot appear in Content Forge History with a Telegram source badge. Use Recall on any history entry to bring the input back into Content Forge for further editing.

One-time setup

1. Create the bot with BotFather

1. Open Telegram → search for @BotFather → /newbot
2. Pick a display name and _bot username
3. Copy the token BotFather gives you - it looks like 123456:ABCdef...
4. Send /setcommands to BotFather, choose your bot, and paste:

   generate - Generate a post from a topic, article URL, or X post URL
   cancel - Cancel the active generation job
   help - Show available commands

2. Connect the bot to TheContentForge

Provide the token from BotFather to TheContentForge to finish connecting the bot - reach out to your onboarding contact or support and we'll link it and set up its webhook. Once connected, Settings → Telegram → Settings → Check bot confirms the token is valid and the bot is live.

3. Add the bot to your group chat

1. In Telegram, add the bot as a member of your team's group chat
2. In group Settings → Administrators → Add Admin, grant the bot admin rights so it can read messages in topic-enabled groups
3. Get the group's chat_id - the bot tells you itself:

   • In the group, send /start (any command works)
   • Because the chat isn't linked yet, the bot replies with "This chat's ID: -100…"
   • Copy the full negative number (including the leading -100)

4. Allowlist the chat in TheContentForge

1. Sign in as an org admin → Settings → Telegram → Settings tab
2. Under Telegram Bot Health, click Check bot to confirm the token is valid and the webhook is set
3. Under Allowlisted Chat IDs, paste the chat ID and a friendly title → Add

That's it. Members of that chat can now run /generate and the other commands.

Optional: user allowlist

If you want to restrict which Telegram users inside the allowlisted chat can use the bot:

1. Settings → Telegram → Settings → Allowlisted User IDs → enable the toggle
2. Add the Telegram user IDs (numeric) that should have access

When the user allowlist is disabled, any member of the allowlisted chat can use the bot.

Troubleshooting

Symptom	Likely cause
Bot replies "This chat is not linked to an organization"	The chat isn't in the allowlist, or the ID was pasted without the leading -100
Bot doesn't respond at all in a group	Telegram didn't deliver the update. Check Settings → Telegram → Settings → Telegram Bot Health - the connection status and any recent error are shown there
/generate <URL> replies "generation failed"	The generation errored. Open the command in Bot History to see details, or contact support

Plan limits

Your plan sets how many group chats you can connect:

Plan	Bot channels
Starter	1
Pro	5
Enterprise	25

If you need more bot channels than your plan includes, contact support.