Messaging integrations: Telegram & Discord bot support

[setkyar]

Problem / motivation

pi-web is currently browser-only. Users who want to interact with pi on the go (phone, tablet) or from within their team chat (Discord, Telegram) have no way to do so. pi could serve as a personal assistant that lives in messaging apps — answering questions, running commands, summarizing sessions, and staying context-aware via a shared working directory.

Proposed idea (high-level — TBD)

Allow pi-web to connect to Telegram and Discord as a bot, letting users interact with pi through direct messages or group channels.

Possible approach:

• User provides a dedicated working folder (like a personal-assistant workspace) where pi operates.
• pi-web runs the bot (Telegram Bot API via polling/webhook, Discord Bot via Gateway/Interactions).
• Messages sent to the bot are forwarded to a pi RPC worker tied to that folder, preserving context across messages.
• Responses stream back to the chat app (with thoughtful handling of long responses, code blocks, images).
• Session transcripts from messaging are optionally visible in pi-web for review/search.

Open questions to resolve before scoping implementation:

• How does authentication/authorization work per messaging user? (one pi-web instance, many users?)
• Should each messaging user get their own pi session, or a shared session per bot?
• How to handle pi's long-running tool calls and streaming output in messaging apps that expect shorter response times?
• Folder context: is it one global folder per bot, or per-user subdirectories?
• Commands vs. free-text: do we layer slash-commands (e.g., /summarize, /run) over natural language?
• Rate limiting and abuse prevention when exposed to messaging platforms.

Inspiration: Personal AI assistants like ChatGPT on WhatsApp/Telegram, Claude on Slack, etc.

Scope (initial thoughts)

Layer	What
Backend	Bot connection lifecycle (start/stop per platform), message routing to pi RPC workers, webhook endpoints
Frontend	Settings page section to configure Telegram bot token, Discord bot token, working folder, and per-platform toggles
Persistence	Store bot configs and credentials in SQLite (encrypted tokens)

PR requirements (finalized later)

To be defined once the approach is settled.

• E2E tests and screenshots showing the bot setup flow and a working message exchange.

Alternatives considered

• External bridge services (n8n, Zapier) could relay messages to pi-web's chat API, but a first-class integration is simpler for end users.

Acknowledgement

• I understand the maintainer triages requests and will invite a PR only if this moves forward.