THE CHELUS GUIDE
The phone stays home. The conversation doesn’t.
A private chat with the agent running in Termux. The bridge polls Telegram over HTTPS; no public IP or open inbound ports required.
Create your bot
In Telegram, use BotFather to create a bot. Keep its token private. You’ll also need your numeric Telegram user ID, which Chelus uses to recognize the owner.
Save the credentials
On the phone, create the configuration directory if needed. Paste the bot token at the hidden-input prompt, then press Enter. Replace 123456789 with your numeric user ID.
mkdir -p ~/.config/chelus && chmod 700 ~/.config/chelus
read -rs TG
(umask 077; printf '%s' "$TG" > ~/.config/chelus/telegram.token); unset TG
printf '%s' 123456789 > ~/.config/chelus/telegram_user_idStart the bridge
chelus telegramOpen your bot’s private chat and send a message. The bridge must remain running on the device to answer messages and execute scheduled jobs.
Keep it running
To start the bridge after a reboot, install the Termux:Boot app from the same source as Termux and open it once. Then copy the boot script, which takes a wake lock and starts the bridge unless one is already running:
mkdir -p ~/.termux/boot
cp ~/chelus/scripts/termux-boot-chelus.sh ~/.termux/boot/start-chelus
chmod 700 ~/.termux/boot/start-chelusOn the Galaxy A10e the bridge was back about two minutes after a reboot, with nobody touching the phone. Days of Doze and memory pressure are another matter. Exclude Termux from battery optimization, and don’t treat a phone as a guaranteed notification service.
Useful chat commands
| Command | Use it to |
|---|---|
/new | Start a fresh conversation. |
/stop | Cancel the retry countdown while the model is down. |
/memory | Inspect persistent owner memory. |
/notes, /note NAME | Recent notes and broken links, or one note. /notes check runs the full check. |
/learn [what] | Turn a procedure into a skill. |
/skills, /pending | Inspect skills, and changes waiting for your approval. |
/approvals | Inspect or revoke ordinary tool grants. |
/cron | Manage scheduled jobs without the model. |
/stats | Toggle the runtime footer. |
/help | See the available commands. |
Guests stay separate
For guest access, put additional numeric user IDs in ~/.config/chelus/telegram_guests, one per line, then restart the bridge. Guests have separate conversations, cannot access owner memory, notes or skills, and cannot run risky tools. Guest requests still use your DeepSeek account.
File access for guests is further confined to the configured work folder. See tools and approvals for the full boundary.