How to Connect Telegram to Integrity (Capture Ideas From Chat) — Integrity
You have the idea in the checkout line, on the walk home, in the middle of a thread with three other people. By the time you open the app, it is gone — or worse, it is still rattling around in your head an hour later, unrecorded, taxing you. The gap between having a thought and putting it somewhere you trust is where most notes die.
Integrity’s Telegram integration closes that gap. You message your workspace the way you already message everyone else, and what you send becomes part of your tree — a node you can nest, tag, reference, or build on later. No context switch, no new app to learn. Telegram is where the thought already is; this just gives it somewhere to go.
What the integration actually is
Integrity is an outliner. Everything in it is a node in one tree: a line, a heading, a task, a card on a canvas, a whole document, a recorded meeting — all the same underlying thing, viewed differently. The point of the product is that you never lose the thread between them.
The Telegram integration extends that thread to your phone’s chat list. A connected chat is handled by your workspace’s AI, and that AI can read your whole workspace and act on it. So a message to the bot is not a dead-drop into an inbox you have to triage later. It is a live conversation with something that already knows your outline — it can find the right place, write a clean node, arrange cards on a canvas, or just answer a question about work you did last week.
One detail worth stating plainly: Integrity runs one platform bot for every workspace. You are not spinning up your own bot, pasting a token, or hosting anything. You generate a short code, send it once, and the chat is bound to your workspace. That is the whole setup.
Connecting a chat
The flow lives in your workspace under Settings → Telegram. It takes under a minute.
- Open Settings → Telegram. You will see the platform bot’s handle and, once you have connected chats, a list of them.
- Click “Generate connect code.” Integrity mints a short, single-use code. It expires in ten minutes, so generate it when you are ready to use it.
- Send the code to the bot. For a direct message, click Open in Telegram — the deep link opens the bot and hands it the code for you. You can also copy the link and open it yourself.
- For a group, use the command instead. Add the bot to the group, then send
/connect <code>(the settings screen gives you the exact line to copy). The chat binds to your workspace on the spot.
That is it. The chat now talks to your workspace. The settings list shows every connected chat — a person icon for direct messages, a group icon for groups — with the date it was connected and a Revoke button if you ever want to cut one off.
Each chat connects to exactly one workspace. That constraint is deliberate: there is never ambiguity about where a message lands.
Capturing ideas, not just sending them
The reason to connect Telegram is not to have a novelty chat window. It is that the thing on the other end can do the work of filing.
Send a loose thought and the AI can turn it into a node in the right part of your outline. Ask it to draft a plan and it builds an editable one — real nodes you can open in the app and keep shaping, not a wall of text pasted into a message. Because it reads the whole workspace, “add this under the launch doc” or “what did we decide about pricing” both resolve against your actual tree, not against a blank slate.
A few things the connected AI can do, all of which mirror what it can do in the web app:
| From a Telegram message | What lands in your workspace |
|---|---|
| A loose idea or a to-do | A node — a line, a task, a heading — placed in your outline |
| “Draft a plan for X” | An editable plan built as real, nested nodes |
| “Lay this out on a canvas” | Nodes arranged and connected on a canvas |
| A voice note | Transcribed, then acted on like any other message |
| A photo, PDF, or file | Stored as a workspace file the AI can read before answering |
| “What did we say about Y?” | An answer drawn from your existing nodes |
Media is a real part of this, not a footnote. A photo, a voice memo, a document you forward — each is stored as a file in your workspace under the same plan limits as a web upload, and the AI can read it before it replies. So the receipt you snap, the voice note you record while your hands are full, the PDF someone sends you — all of it can become something you actually find again.
When the AI creates or changes something, it sends back a link straight to that node, so one tap takes you from the chat to the work. It can also offer follow-up buttons — one tap to keep going without retyping.
Direct messages and groups behave differently, on purpose
In a direct message, the bot answers everything you send. It shows a live status indicator while it works, and the finished reply lands as one clean message. This is your private line to your workspace.
In a group, the bot holds its tongue. It replies only when you @mention it or reply directly to one of its messages. This is the right default — a shared channel with three people planning a trip should not have a bot chiming in on every line. When you do want it, you address it, and it answers with the same full reach it has in a direct message. It even prefixes who said what, so a multi-person thread stays legible to the AI.
This keeps the integration honest: it is present when you want it and invisible when you don’t.
It acts as you, with the same boundaries
A connected chat is handled by the AI acting as the member who connected it. That means it can read and write exactly what that member can — no more, no less. There is no special back door and no elevated bot account with its own permissions.
The membership boundary is enforced continuously, not just at connect time. If the person who connected a chat later loses access to the workspace, the connection is automatically torn down and the chat can no longer talk to it. You can also revoke any chat yourself from Settings → Telegram, or send /disconnect from inside the chat. A handful of in-chat commands round it out: /status shows which workspace you are linked to and links you into it, /help lists everything the bot can do, and /clear starts a fresh thread while keeping your history.
A note on honesty
A few things this integration is not. It is not a backup of your Telegram chats, and it does not read messages you never address to it — in a group it sees only what you point at it. It also is not a replacement for the app: the outline, canvas, supertags, and everything else still live in Integrity. Chat is a fast on-ramp, not the whole road.
What it is: the shortest path from a thought to a node. You already keep a running thread with the people who matter. Now one of those threads is your workspace — and the thing you keep is the thread itself.
Curious what a plan costs, or want to see the rest of what Integrity does? Head to integrity.sh.
Frequently asked
Do I need my own bot token to connect Telegram?
No. Integrity runs one platform bot that serves every workspace. You generate a connect code in Settings, open the bot, and send it — there is no BotFather setup, no token to paste, no server to run.
Can I connect a Telegram group, not just a direct message?
Yes. Add the bot to a group and send the /connect command with your code. In a group the bot stays quiet by default and only replies when you @mention it or reply to one of its messages, so it never floods the conversation.
Who does the AI act as when it writes to my workspace?
The chat is handled by your workspace's AI acting as the member who connected it. It has the same read and write reach that member has in the app. If that person loses access to the workspace, the connection is torn down automatically.
What happens to a photo or voice note I send the bot?
Media is stored as a real file in your workspace, under the same plan limits as a web upload. Voice notes can be transcribed, and the AI can read documents and images before it answers — so a thought you fire off from your phone lands as something you can find later.
Keep the thread — try Integrity.