Use Telegram DM Topics to Organize One Hermes Bot

One long bot chat gets noisy fast.

Research, builds, news, scheduled output, and troubleshooting can all end up in the same stream. Hermes still works, but the user has to keep switching context inside one crowded conversation.

Telegram DM topics give one Hermes bot multiple focused lanes.

What users get

One assistant, not many bots.
Separate sessions for different kinds of work.
Cleaner prompts because each topic keeps its own live context.
A better place for scheduled outputs to land.
Less noise in the main chat.

Think of it as one assistant with rooms:

Hermes bot DM
├── General
├── News
├── Build
├── Research
└── Ops

Each topic stays inside the same Telegram bot DM, but Hermes treats it as a separate session. The bot, tools, memory, and profile can stay shared. The active conversation context stays scoped to the topic.

Setup

First, enable threaded mode for the bot in BotFather.

Use the Telegram account that owns the bot:

Open @BotFather.
Open BotFather’s management interface.
Select the Hermes bot.
Open Bot Settings.
Find Threads Settings or Threaded Mode.
Enable Threaded Mode.
Allow users to create topics.

This is the easy step to miss. The setting is controlled through BotFather, not the normal bot DM settings.

Then create the lanes manually in Telegram:

Open the Hermes bot DM.
Tap the bot name at the top to open chat info.
Enable Topics if the chat is not already in topic mode.
Open the bot DM’s topic list or All Messages view.
Use Telegram’s create-topic action to add the lanes you want, such as General, News, and Build.
Send the first message inside each topic so Telegram creates the thread and Hermes can bind that thread to its own session.

Do not stop in the root DM after enabling topics. The root can behave like a lobby, especially when ignore_root_dm: true is set. The working lanes are the topics themselves.

If you need a clean slate inside one lane later, /new resets only that topic’s Hermes session. It does not create the topic.

Choosing topics

Start small. Use topic names that match real work modes.

A practical default:

General: quick questions and miscellaneous work.
News: current events and scheduled briefings.
Build: implementation, repository work, and verification.
Research: papers, references, and synthesis.
Ops: Hermes setup, models, cron jobs, gateway behavior, and troubleshooting.

The topic names matter less than the boundary they create.

Optional stable config

Manually created lanes do not need user-driven topic commands. If you want stable operator-managed topics in config, store the existing topic thread IDs privately:

platforms:
  telegram:
    extra:
      ignore_root_dm: true
      dm_topics:
        - chat_id: <telegram_user_id>
          topics:
            - name: General
              thread_id: <general_thread_id>
            - name: News
              thread_id: <news_thread_id>
            - name: Build
              thread_id: <build_thread_id>
            - name: Research
              thread_id: <research_thread_id>
            - name: Ops
              thread_id: <ops_thread_id>

ignore_root_dm: true helps keep the root DM from becoming the everything-chat.

For public examples, use placeholders. Do not publish real chat IDs, thread IDs, bot tokens, local paths, or delivery targets. In private config, thread IDs are what prevent an already-created lane from being confused with a new topic Hermes should create.

When to use DM topics

Use DM topics when one person mainly uses the bot and wants separate private sessions without extra bots.

Use group topics when other people need to see or join the conversations.

Bottom line

Telegram DM topics make one Hermes bot easier to use. Enable threaded mode in BotFather, create the topic lanes manually in the bot DM, and send scheduled output to the topic where it belongs.

The core benefit is simple: cleaner context, less noise, and one assistant that stays organized.