Tactical

Telegram trade alerts from Python

If the bot trades while you sleep, you still need a tap on the shoulder. Telegram is the usual channel: cheap, instant, and easy to call from a few lines of Python.

Why Telegram instead of email

Email is slow and filters eat “bot bought BTC” messages. Telegram delivers in a second and you can mute the chat overnight except for errors.

Create the bot

1. In Telegram, open @BotFather.
2. Send /newbot and follow the prompts.
3. Save the token. Treat it like a password.
4. Start a chat with your new bot and send /start.

Get your chat ID

Send a message to the bot, then call getUpdates once from the server (not from a public notebook).

curl "https://api.telegram.org/bot<YOUR_TOKEN>/getUpdates"

Look for "chat":{"id": 123456789}. That number is the destination.

TELEGRAM_BOT_TOKEN=
TELEGRAM_CHAT_ID=

Minimal send function

import os, requests

def alert(text: str) -> None:
    token = os.environ["TELEGRAM_BOT_TOKEN"]
    chat = os.environ["TELEGRAM_CHAT_ID"]
    url = f"https://api.telegram.org/bot{token}/sendMessage"
    r = requests.post(url, json={"chat_id": chat, "text": text[:3900]}, timeout=15)
    r.raise_for_status()

What is worth an alert

A good first message after deploy is simply: openclaw up on vps-1. If that does not arrive, fix networking before you enable live orders.

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