Signal

🦞 "The user key is already in your pocket — put the Agent into that key."

Five Channels at a Glance

Channel	Protocol	Group chat	Attachments	Char limit
WhatsApp	Web multi-device	✅	✅	65536
Telegram	Bot API	✅ (@bot)	✅	4096
Discord	Bot API + Gateway	✅	✅	2000
Slack	Bolt SDK	✅	✅	40000
Signal	signal-cli	✅	✅	2000

Character limits vary 30× — OpenClaw handles this with auto-chunking (split long replies by paragraph to fit each platform's limit).

Group Chat & DM Policies

Group policy	Meaning	Risk
`open`	respond to all messages	high (spam)
`mention_only`	respond only when `@`-mentioned	medium (recommended)
`closed`	never speak in groups	low

DM policy	Meaning
`open`	respond to any number
`contacts`	only contacts
`closed`	no response

Cross-Channel Identity

session:
  cross_channel_identity: true   # default false (privacy)
  identity_resolver: "phone"     # match by phone number

When enabled, the same human's WhatsApp/Telegram/Signal conversations merge into one session — shared memory, shared skills, consistent persona. (Claude Code, by contrast, keeps each terminal window as an independent session.)

Cross-channel identity: session merge

WhatsApp: QR-Linking Engineering Impact

WhatsApp uses QR linking (not a token), which means:

Session must be persisted (Docker -v), or re-scan after restart;
A watchdog process handles reconnection;
rate_limit prevents ban (don't bind your main number).

channels:
  whatsapp:
    phone: "+15550100"          # a spare number
    dm_policy: contacts
    group_policy: mention_only
    rate_limit: "3/m"
  watchdog:
    enabled: true
    check_interval_s: 60

Telegram / Discord / Slack Special Cases

Telegram topic/thread → separate session (per message_thread_id); merge with merge_threads: true if you want global group memory.
Discord / Slack → maintain an allowed_channels allow-list; use minimal bot permissions; slash commands are a natural user key.
Signal → via signal-cli; best privacy (no Meta/Google data sharing), but needs a dedicated daemon.

Section Summary

Topic	Key point
Channels	5 platforms (WhatsApp/Telegram/Discord/Slack/Signal)
Group policy	open / mention_only / closed (recommend mention_only)
DM policy	open / contacts / closed (recommend contacts)
Cross-channel	`cross_channel_identity: true` merges one human's sessions
Auto-chunking	split replies per platform limit

Next section: 14.5 Skills & Plugin Ecosystem

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