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Building a personal assistant with crocbot (Croc-style)

crocbot is a Telegram gateway for Pi agents. This guide is the “personal assistant” setup: a dedicated Telegram bot that behaves like your always-on agent.

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⚠️ Safety first

You’re putting an agent in a position to:
  • run commands on your machine (depending on your Pi tool setup)
  • read/write files in your workspace
  • send messages back out via Telegram
Start conservative:
  • Always set channels.telegram.allowFrom (never run open-to-the-world on your personal Mac).
  • Use a dedicated Telegram bot for the assistant.
  • Heartbeats now default to every 30 minutes. Disable until you trust the setup by setting agents.defaults.heartbeat.every: "0m".

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Prerequisites

  • Node 22+
  • crocbot available on PATH (recommended: global install)
  • A Telegram bot token (from @BotFather)
npm install -g crocbot@latest
# or: pnpm add -g crocbot@latest
From source (development): 
git clone https://github.com/moshehbenavraham/crocbot.git
cd crocbot
pnpm install
pnpm ui:build # auto-installs UI deps on first run
pnpm build
pnpm link --global
You want this: 
Your Phone (personal)
┌─────────────────┐
│  Your Telegram  │  ──────▶  @YourAssistantBot
│  @your_user     │  message  (Telegram Bot)
└─────────────────┘                  │
                                     │ bot token
                                     ▼
                            ┌─────────────────┐
                            │  Your Mac       │
                            │  (crocbot)      │
                            │    Pi agent     │
                            └─────────────────┘
Create a dedicated bot via @BotFather so only messages to that bot become “agent input”.

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5-minute quick start

  1. Configure your Telegram bot token:
crocbot channels login
  1. Start the Gateway (leave it running):
crocbot gateway --port 18789
  1. Put a minimal config in ~/.crocbot/crocbot.json:
{
  channels: { telegram: { allowFrom: ["@your_telegram_username"] } }
}
Now message your bot from your allowlisted Telegram account. When onboarding finishes, we auto-open the dashboard with your gateway token and print the tokenized link. To reopen later: crocbot dashboard.

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Give the agent a workspace (AGENTS)

Croc reads operating instructions and “memory” from its workspace directory. By default, crocbot uses ~/croc as the agent workspace, and will create it (plus starter AGENTS.md, SOUL.md, TOOLS.md, IDENTITY.md, USER.md) automatically on setup/first agent run. BOOTSTRAP.md is only created when the workspace is brand new (it should not come back after you delete it). Tip: treat this folder like Croc’s “memory” and make it a git repo (ideally private) so your AGENTS.md + memory files are backed up. If git is installed, brand-new workspaces are auto-initialized. 
crocbot setup
Full workspace layout + backup guide: Agent workspace Memory workflow: Memory Optional: choose a different workspace with agents.defaults.workspace (supports ~). 
{
  agent: {
    workspace: "~/croc"
  }
}
If you already ship your own workspace files from a repo, you can disable bootstrap file creation entirely: 
{
  agent: {
    skipBootstrap: true
  }
}

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The config that turns it into “an assistant”

crocbot defaults to a good assistant setup, but you’ll usually want to tune:
  • persona/instructions in SOUL.md
  • thinking defaults (if desired)
  • heartbeats (once you trust it)
Example: 
{
  logging: { level: "info" },
  agent: {
    model: "anthropic/claude-opus-4-5",
    workspace: "~/croc",
    thinkingDefault: "high",
    timeoutSeconds: 1800,
    // Start with 0; enable later.
    heartbeat: { every: "0m" }
  },
  channels: {
    telegram: {
      allowFrom: ["@your_telegram_username"],
      groups: {
        "*": { requireMention: true }
      }
    }
  },
  routing: {
    groupChat: {
      mentionPatterns: ["@croc", "croc"]
    }
  },
  session: {
    scope: "per-sender",
    resetTriggers: ["/new", "/reset"],
    reset: {
      mode: "daily",
      atHour: 4,
      idleMinutes: 10080
    }
  }
}

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Sessions and memory

  • Session files: ~/.crocbot/agents/<agentId>/sessions/{{SessionId}}.jsonl
  • Session metadata (token usage, last route, etc): ~/.crocbot/agents/<agentId>/sessions/sessions.json (legacy: ~/.crocbot/sessions/sessions.json)
  • /new or /reset starts a fresh session for that chat (configurable via resetTriggers). If sent alone, the agent replies with a short hello to confirm the reset.
  • /compact [instructions] compacts the session context and reports the remaining context budget.

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Heartbeats (proactive mode)

By default, crocbot runs a heartbeat every 30 minutes with the prompt: Read HEARTBEAT.md if it exists (workspace context). Follow it strictly. Do not infer or repeat old tasks from prior chats. If nothing needs attention, reply HEARTBEAT_OK. Set agents.defaults.heartbeat.every: "0m" to disable.
  • If HEARTBEAT.md exists but is effectively empty (only blank lines and markdown headers like # Heading), crocbot skips the heartbeat run to save API calls.
  • If the file is missing, the heartbeat still runs and the model decides what to do.
  • If the agent replies with HEARTBEAT_OK (optionally with short padding; see agents.defaults.heartbeat.ackMaxChars), crocbot suppresses outbound delivery for that heartbeat.
  • Heartbeats run full agent turns — shorter intervals burn more tokens.
{
  agent: {
    heartbeat: { every: "30m" }
  }
}

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Media in and out

Inbound attachments (images/audio/docs) can be surfaced to your command via templates:
  • {{MediaPath}} (local temp file path)
  • {{MediaUrl}} (pseudo-URL)
  • {{Transcript}} (if audio transcription is enabled)
Outbound attachments from the agent: include MEDIA:<path-or-url> on its own line (no spaces). Example: 
Here’s the screenshot.
MEDIA:/tmp/screenshot.png
crocbot extracts these and sends them as media alongside the text.

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Operations checklist

crocbot status          # local status (creds, sessions, queued events)
crocbot status --all    # full diagnosis (read-only, pasteable)
crocbot status --deep   # adds gateway health probes (Telegram)
crocbot health --json   # gateway health snapshot (WS)
Logs live under /tmp/crocbot/ (default: crocbot-YYYY-MM-DD.log).

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Next steps