Manage channels

Channels let the same local Bestie runtime serve chat surfaces outside the terminal. Use bestie channels to see which adapters are configured, check daemon state, and run channel-focused diagnostics.

Bestie currently includes two channel adapters:

Channel	Polling	Attachments	Voice	Tool progress	Approvals
Telegram	Yes	Yes	Voice input and replies	Yes	Yes
Zalo	Yes	No	No	Yes	Yes

Use Telegram when you need attachment or voice workflows. Use Zalo for owner-only text chat through the current Zalo adapter.

List channel status

Show all known channels:

bestie channels
bestie channels list
bestie channels status

These commands print a table with:

• channel name
• whether the channel is enabled in config
• whether an owner id is configured
• the token environment variable name
• daemon state for that channel

Daemon state can be RUN, STALE, or STOP. A stale daemon means Bestie found a state file but the recorded process is no longer running.

Run channel diagnostics

Run diagnostics for all channels:

bestie channels doctor

Run diagnostics for one channel:

bestie channels doctor --channel telegram
bestie channels doctor --channel zalo

Add --connect when you want Doctor to make the channel-specific network check:

bestie channels doctor --channel telegram --connect
bestie channels doctor --channel zalo --connect

For automation, emit JSON:

bestie channels doctor --channel all --json
bestie channels doctor --channel telegram --connect --json
bestie channels doctor --channel zalo --connect --json

Channel Doctor filters the full Doctor report to checks that match the selected channel. It exits non-zero when selected channel checks include failures.

Start a channel

Run Telegram polling in the foreground:

bestie channels telegram

Run Zalo polling in the foreground:

bestie channels zalo

For a smoke check, process one polling batch and exit:

bestie channels telegram --once
bestie channels zalo --once

For long-running local operation, use daemons:

bestie daemon start --channel telegram
bestie daemon start --channel zalo
bestie daemon status --channel all

Configure a channel

Use the channel-specific setup commands:

bestie channels telegram setup
bestie channels zalo setup

Channel setup stores non-secret channel settings in .bestie/config.json and stores token values in .bestie/.env.

Telegram also supports owner discovery:

bestie channels telegram whoami

Commands inside channels

Both Telegram and Zalo support local runtime commands from the configured owner account:

/help
/status
/providers
/memory
/memory pending
/memory pause
/memory resume
/approvals
/approve <id>
/deny <id>

Telegram also supports /start and /doctor.

Memory commands include additional forms such as /memory list, /memory analyze, /memory cleanup dry-run, /memory governance status, /memory maintenance status, /memory maintenance install, and /memory maintenance remove.

Unknown slash commands return a short fallback instead of going to the LLM.

Troubleshooting

The channel is off

Run setup for that channel:

bestie channels telegram setup
bestie channels zalo setup

Then check status:

bestie channels list

The owner is missing

Set the owner id in config or rerun setup. For Telegram, you can send a message to the bot and run:

bestie channels telegram whoami

The daemon is stale

Restart that channel daemon:

bestie daemon restart --channel telegram
bestie daemon restart --channel zalo

A channel command is unknown

Supported channel adapter names are telegram and zalo. Run:

bestie channels --help

Then use the channel-specific guide for setup and runtime details.