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Messaging Reduck MCP

Hermes Agent Telegram setup for your personal account, not a bot: read, search and reply as you

Prompt template

Read my unread Telegram chats and groups, tell me which ones need an answer from me, and draft the replies. Do not send anything until I approve it.

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Overview

People who run Hermes Agent want it to work in the Telegram they actually use: catch up on their groups, find a message from last month, answer a client, watch a channel. Hermes's Telegram integration is a bot you talk to, so it cannot see any of that. With Reduck added as an MCP server, Hermes gets tools that act as your own Telegram account, through Telegram Web in your Chrome.

Why it's hard

  • The Hermes Telegram integration is a bot. Its setup creates a bot with BotFather and authorizes your user id. A bot sees only the chats it was added to, and Telegram's Bot API gives it neither message history nor search.
  • A userbot needs a developer setup. Userbot recipes for Hermes run Telethon: an api_id and api_hash from my.telegram.org, a phone code, and a .session file that gives full access to your account, kept on the machine where Hermes runs.
  • Accounts get limited. Telegram restricts accounts that act like bots, and a thread on r/hermesagent titled "Got banned from Telegram for using Hermes AI chat" drew 110 comments. Userbot recipes add their own cooldowns and daily caps against it.
  • Every chat becomes input. Messages from other people reach the agent, so the tools that write should ask before they act.

How Reduck does it

Reduck runs Telegram scripts in your own Chrome, where you are already signed in to web.telegram.org, and Hermes calls them as MCP tools:

  1. Add Reduck to Hermes. Hermes reads MCP servers from mcp_servers in ~/.hermes/config.yaml; the Reduck entry is in docs.reduck.ai. Start hermes chat and Hermes lists the Telegram tools.
  2. Read. get_inbox lists your chats with unread and mention counts; get_conversation reads a chat's history, 40 messages a call; search_messages searches all your chats at once.
  3. Act, with your approval. send_message sends as you, after the agent shows you the chat's title and you confirm. mark_read marks a chat as read only when you ask.

Hermes then sees what you see, history included, with no bot token, no api_id and no session file on its machine. Reading does not mark anything as read.

How to start

  1. Create a free account at reduck.ai.
  2. Install the Reduck extension in Chrome and pair it.
  3. Connect Reduck to your agent: docs.reduck.ai.
  4. Ask: "Read my unread Telegram chats and groups, tell me which ones need an answer from me, and draft the replies. Do not send anything until I approve it."

Sign in to web.telegram.org in that Chrome first.

Ways to connect Hermes Agent to Telegram

Method Your own chats and history Setup Sends as
Hermes Telegram integration No, the bot's chats only A BotFather bot, TELEGRAM_BOT_TOKEN, TELEGRAM_ALLOWED_USERS The bot
Telethon userbot (hermes-telegram-userbot) Yes An api_id and api_hash, a phone code, a .session file You
Reduck as an MCP server Yes Telegram Web open in your Chrome You, after your approval

Where Reduck is weaker: a bot or a Telethon userbot runs on a server around the clock, and the bot is how you chat with Hermes from your phone. Reduck acts only while your Chrome is open.

FAQ

Not with its built-in Telegram integration, which is a bot: you create it with BotFather (or Create with QR in the dashboard) and set TELEGRAM_BOT_TOKEN and TELEGRAM_ALLOWED_USERS. To act as your own account, give Hermes a tool that does: Reduck, added under mcp_servers in ~/.hermes/config.yaml, reads and writes in the Telegram Web session of your Chrome.
The bot is a separate Telegram account that you talk to: it sees only the chats it is added to, and Telegram's Bot API gives it no message history and no search. A userbot is your own account driven by software: it sees every chat you are in, history included, and acts with your name. Reduck works like a userbot, from your browser session instead of an api_id and a session file.
No. Userbot setups for Hermes, such as hermes-telegram-userbot on GitHub, use Telethon: an api_id and api_hash from my.telegram.org (its README says to turn off your VPN while creating the app), a phone code, and a .session file that its README calls full access to the account. Reduck needs none of these: it uses the Telegram Web session you already have in Chrome.
It can restrict any account that acts like a bot, whatever tool drives it. Telethon's FAQ says Telegram learns spam patterns and bans suspicious activity, recommends well-established accounts only, and says to check a limit with @SpamBot; a PeerFloodError means you are limited. Keep the agent to reading, and to sends you approve, at a person's pace, and never message many people who did not write first.
Not with this setup. send_message is marked as needing a person, and its contract asks the agent to confirm the chat with you and show you its title before it sends. delete_message works the same way.
No. The read scripts do not open the conversations, so nobody gets a read receipt and your unread counts stay as they were.
No. The scripts run in your own Chrome, through the Reduck extension. Hermes can run anywhere, but a Telegram action waits for that Chrome to be open.
Yes. Use the bot to talk to Hermes from your phone, and Reduck for what Hermes does in your own account. A message you send to the bot can ask Hermes to summarize your groups through Reduck.

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