Connect NOVA to Slack, Telegram, and WhatsApp

Your AI lives on your desktop at home.

You are at the airport.

That gap used to mean you were cut off. Connect NOVA to Slack, Telegram, and WhatsApp, and the gap disappears. You text a thread from your phone; the machine on your desk answers.

NOVA (Native Omnimodal Voice Agent) is a local-first, desktop-native voice AI you own outright. One-time license, your own keys. The voice loop is the front door. Messaging channels are the back door you can reach from the other side of the planet.

Why text your own computer

Think about what your desktop agent already does when you are sitting in front of it.

It searches the web. It runs your n8n automations. It reads and writes your vault. It can even place a phone call on your behalf.

Now picture all of that reachable from a chat thread in your pocket.

You are walking the dog. You fire off a message: "pull the three latest support tickets and summarize them." By the time you are home, the answer is sitting in the thread.

That is the stake. Not "we added integrations." It is your machine, your tools, your context, in your hand, when you are nowhere near the desk.

This is the same JARVIS-shaped idea we keep chasing: an agent that is always within reach, not chained to one screen. If that framing lands for you, read how NOVA is a lot like JARVIS from Iron Man.

Connect NOVA to Slack, Telegram, or WhatsApp: the pattern is the same

Here is the shape before the details.

Every channel works the same way. You create a bot or app on the platform's side. That platform hands you one or two secrets. You paste those secrets into the Comms tab in NOVA's settings. You save.

That is it. No code. No server to babysit. Three fields, maybe four, per channel.

The Comms tab sits in NOVA's tabbed settings panel, next to LLM, Embeddings, and Runtime. Each field has a small info icon with a "get your key" link, so you are never guessing where a token comes from.

One pattern, three platforms: create the bot, copy the secret, paste it in the Comms tab, save.

New to the app? Walk through how to set up NOVA first, then come back here.

Slack: a bot in your workspace

Slack is the move if your work already lives there.

You create a Slack app, drop a bot into your workspace, and from then on you DM the bot like a teammate. It replies with whatever NOVA would tell you at the desk.

The steps:

1. Create a new Slack app from scratch in the Slack API console, pointed at your workspace.
2. Give the bot the message scopes it needs and install it to the workspace.
3. Copy the bot token (the one that starts with xoxb-).
4. Copy the signing secret from the app's basic settings.
5. Paste both into the Slack fields in NOVA's Comms tab and save.

The bot token is how NOVA speaks as the bot. The signing secret is how NOVA verifies that incoming messages are really from Slack and not someone spoofing the endpoint. You need both.

Telegram: the fastest one to stand up

If you want to feel this work in two minutes, start with Telegram.

Telegram hands you a bot through a bot. You message @BotFather, answer a couple of prompts, and it gives you a token.

1. Open Telegram and start a chat with @BotFather.
2. Send /newbot and pick a name and a username for your bot.
3. BotFather replies with an HTTP API token. Copy the whole string.
4. Paste it into the Telegram field in NOVA's Comms tab and save.
5. Open a chat with your new bot and say hi.

One token. One field. That is the entire integration.

Guard that token like a password. Anyone holding it can talk to your bot, so keep it out of screenshots and shared notes.

WhatsApp: reach the app everyone already has

WhatsApp is the heavy hitter. It is the messenger most of the planet already opens every day, which makes it the channel where "text my computer" stops feeling like a trick and starts feeling normal.

It runs on Meta's WhatsApp Cloud API, so the setup lives inside Meta's developer tools.

1. Create an app in the Meta developer dashboard and add the WhatsApp product to it.
2. Generate an access token for the WhatsApp Cloud API.
3. Choose a verify token. This is a string you make up; it confirms the webhook handshake.
4. Paste the access token and the verify token into the WhatsApp fields in NOVA's Comms tab and save.

The access token lets NOVA send and receive on your WhatsApp number. The verify token is the password you and Meta both agree on so the webhook connection can be trusted. Pick something long and random for it.

One thing about reaching home from the road

Slack, Telegram, and WhatsApp all push messages to NOVA over webhooks.

For those platforms to find your desktop, NOVA's gateway needs a public address to listen on. NOVA ships with a default relay, and you can point it at your own tunnel if you would rather self-host the path.

This is the same plumbing behind reaching your agent from afar in general. For the full picture, read how to remotely connect to NOVA while you are away.

Now go text your computer

Pick one channel. Telegram is the gentlest start.

Create the bot, copy the token, paste it in the Comms tab, save. Then message your bot from your phone and watch your desktop answer.

Once one channel clicks, the other two are the same muscle memory.

This is the quiet power of owning the thing instead of renting it: your agent, your keys, reachable on the apps you already live in. If you do not have it yet, Get NOVA and start with the channel you check most.