Approve from your phone

shotoku telegram sends every new pending decision to your Telegram with Approve and Deny buttons. A tap does exactly what shotoku approve does.

◷ PENDING APPROVAL  dec_092405fc58b6
support-agent → paypal__create_refund
Amount: $480 · full refund of capture 2PY84818WJ8069634
• Amount $480 exceeds per-transaction limit of $100
[ ✓ Approve ]  [ ✗ Deny ]

After a tap, the message becomes the outcome and loses its buttons. Nothing listens on your machine: Shotoku long-polls Telegram over outbound HTTPS, so it works behind any router.

Setup, about three minutes

1. Create a bot. In Telegram, open @BotFather, send /newbot, and pick a name and a username ending in bot. Keep the token it gives you secret.

2. Find your chat ID. Run Shotoku with only the token; it starts in setup mode:

bash

SHOTOKU_TELEGRAM_BOT_TOKEN=7123456789:AAF... shotoku telegram

Open your bot on your phone, press Start, and send any message. The terminal prints your chat ID.

3. Run it.

bash

export SHOTOKU_TELEGRAM_BOT_TOKEN=7123456789:AAF...
export SHOTOKU_TELEGRAM_CHAT_ID=123456789
shotoku telegram

Your phone gets “Shotoku is watching.” Leave it running while your agent works. It reads the same ledger as the CLI and the MCP server.

What it does


Only your taps count	Telegram says who pressed a button, and a bot cannot fake a press from another account. Presses from anyone else are refused and logged; strangers' messages get no reply.
The channel is recorded	The approval carries `via: telegram:<your user ID>`, so the audit trail shows the answer came from your phone.
Answered elsewhere	Approve in the terminal or the dashboard instead, and the Telegram message updates and loses its buttons.
Only new decisions	Decisions already pending when it starts are not sent; `shotoku status` lists them.
One per bot	Telegram delivers a bot's updates to a single reader. A second shotoku telegram on the same bot stops with an explanation.

What it does not do

It is not a sandbox. It puts your answer on another device, so an agent can no longer reach the approval through the terminal you are watching. A process running as your user can still run shotoku approveor write the ledger. Real separation means the agent runs without access to Shotoku's files.

The notification goes through Telegram.The decision is made on your machine and does not depend on Telegram. The message does: the agent's name, the tool, the amount, where the amount came from and the reason reach Telegram's servers. No other tool argument is sent.