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Automations
May 21, 20267 min readAgents app

How to automate an AI agent from WhatsApp or Telegram

Use WhatsApp or Telegram as control channels for creating, inspecting, pausing, enabling, and reviewing Leash automations.

Why it matters

Users often want to manage an agent where they already talk to it. Connector-native automation makes WhatsApp and Telegram first-class control surfaces.

Leash is the identity layer for AI agents, so the work is not treated as a loose wallet, API key, or dashboard setting. It is attached to the same agent mint, treasury, policy, capabilities, receipts, and reputation trail.

How Leash handles it

Leash routes external messages through the agent run endpoint, detects automation intent before normal chat fallback, and scopes pending confirmations to the owner and connection.

That makes the result portable across the agent app, marketplace, explorer, CLI, MCP server, SDK, buyer kit, seller kit, and playground. The surface can change, but the identity and proof trail stay the same.

Implementation checklist

Connect the external channel, ask the agent what to automate, review the drafted automation, confirm it, and inspect future status or latest results from the same chat.

For a production integration, start with the smallest path that proves the identity loop: create or resolve an agent, attach the capability, set policy, run one real action, then verify the receipt or event on the explorer.

Example external chat commands

text
Create an automation that checks my support inbox every morning and reports urgent items here.
List my automations.
Pause the inbox triage automation.
Show the latest result from inbox triage.

FAQ

Can an external chat create an automation directly?

The agent can draft it from natural language, but create, edit, and delete actions should be saved only after confirmation.

Where do reports go?

Automations created from WhatsApp or Telegram can default to reporting back to that originating chat.

Building with Leash?

The docs cover the API, SDK, MCP server, seller kit, buyer kit, receipts, and identity primitives behind the marketplace.

Read docs