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Manwe on Telegram

Decisions don't wait until you're at your desk. Connect Telegram and you can ask Manwe from your phone. The answer still comes from your Mac, with your memory, your advisors, and sources you can open.

What it does

You talk to a private Telegram bot that belongs to you. Your Mac picks up each message, answers it the way Manwe would in the app, and sends the answer back. Nothing is answered by a server somewhere else, and there's no Manwe server in between: messages travel between Telegram and your Mac.

  • Ask anything you'd ask in the app. Answers come with their sources, and the advisor who'd answer on your Mac answers here.
  • Everything shows up on your Mac. Each Telegram conversation appears in Manwe too, marked "via Telegram", so you can pick it up later at your desk.
  • Check-ins and watch updates arrive here. When Manwe checks in about a decision, or something it's watching is worth reporting, it lands in Telegram as well. Reply, and you continue that conversation.
  • Standing requests work too. "Every Friday, tell me if…" sets up a watch from your phone just as it does on the Mac.

A few commands

Type / in the chat and Telegram suggests them:

/newStarts a new conversation. Until you send it, messages continue the current one.
/secondGets second opinions on the last question from other advisors. Missing specialists can be created when needed.
/stopStops the answer being written.
/helpA short reminder of what Manwe can do here.

When an answer suggests follow-up questions, they appear as buttons under it. Tap one to ask it.

Setting it up

Open Settings › Connected apps and choose Set up Telegram. It takes about two minutes, and Telegram bots are free. Setup walks you through three steps:

  1. Create a bot. Open BotFather, Telegram's official helper for making bots, and send /newbot. Give the bot a name and a username ending in "bot". Manwe suggests both, with a button to copy each.
  2. Add its token. BotFather replies with a token: numbers, a colon, then a long run of letters and numbers. Paste it into Manwe. You can paste BotFather's whole message; Manwe finds the token in it and checks it with Telegram right away.
  3. Say hello. Open your bot, with the button on your Mac or by pointing your phone's camera at the code, and tap Start. That pairs your Telegram account with this Manwe.

Why it's private

The token works like a password for your bot, so treat it like one. Manwe keeps it in your Mac's Keychain, not in a settings file.

Pairing is what keeps the bot yours. The Start link carries a one-time code, and only the account that taps Start with that code becomes the owner. Anyone else who finds your bot and writes to it is told, at most once an hour, that this is a private Manwe. Their messages are never answered.

Your Mac does the work. Manwe answers while your Mac is awake and Manwe is open. If the Mac is asleep, your messages wait in Telegram until it wakes. A Mac that's always on, like a Mac mini, answers any time. Telegram needs Manwe itself open: Keep working after quit doesn't cover it.

One more thing to know: if a deep review or another run is using a model on your Mac, Telegram asks you to try again when it finishes, because a local model can only do one thing at a time. Cloud models don't have that limit. See Models and providers.

Changing your mind

In Settings › Connected apps, the Telegram card shows your bot, who it's paired with, and whether it's connected.

  • Send check-ins and updates to Telegram is on by default. Turn it off to keep those on your Mac only. You can still ask from your phone.
  • Disconnect stops Manwe answering your bot and forgets the token. Your conversations stay in Manwe. The bot itself still exists in Telegram; to delete it, send /deletebot to BotFather.

If you make a new token in BotFather, the old one stops working, and Manwe tells you Telegram stopped accepting it. Choose Set up again and paste the new one.