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When a pylon job finishes, Pylon sends the agent’s output to a channel. Channels also handle the approval flow — when approval: true, Pylon sends a notification with Investigate and Ignore buttons before the agent runs, and waits for a human to respond. You configure a channel under the channel key in pylon.yaml. If you omit the channel block, Pylon falls back to the global defaults in ~/.pylon/config.yaml under defaults.channel.

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Channel fields

FieldRequiredDescription
typeNoChannel backend: telegram, slack, stdout, or webhook. Falls back to global default.
approvalNoWhen true, Pylon sends an approval notification before the agent runs.
topicNoThread or group subject line, rendered as a template.
messageNoNotification body, rendered as a template. Shown above approval buttons when approval: true.
telegramNoTelegram-specific config. Required when type: telegram.
slackNoSlack-specific config. Required when type: slack.

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Approval flow

When approval: true, Pylon sends a notification with Investigate and Ignore buttons before starting the agent:
  • Investigate — Pylon runs the agent and posts the result back to the channel.
  • Ignore — Pylon discards the job with no agent run.
This is most useful for high-volume triggers like Sentry, where you want to triage before spending agent time on every event.
The approval flow is only supported for webhook triggers. When type: cron, approval: true is ignored and the agent runs immediately.

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Telegram

Telegram support requires a bot token and a chat ID. Pylon uses the Telegram Bot API to send messages and render approval buttons. 
channel:
  type: telegram
  approval: true
  topic: "{{ .body.data.event.title }}"
  message: |
    {{ .body.data.event.title }}
    {{ .body.data.event.culprit }}
    {{ .body.data.event.web_url }}
  telegram:
    bot_token: "${TELEGRAM_BOT_TOKEN}"
    chat_id: 123456789
    allowed_users:
      - 987654321

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Telegram fields

FieldRequiredDescription
bot_tokenYesYour Telegram bot token from BotFather. Supports ${ENV_VAR}.
chat_idYesThe chat or group ID where Pylon sends messages.
allowed_usersNoList of Telegram user IDs permitted to press approval buttons. If omitted, any member of the chat can approve.
To find your chat_id, add your bot to a group and send a message, then check https://api.telegram.org/bot<token>/getUpdates.

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Slack

Slack support uses Socket Mode, which means Pylon maintains a persistent WebSocket connection to Slack — no public inbound URL required. 
channel:
  type: slack
  approval: true
  topic: "PR #{{ .body.number }}: {{ .body.pull_request.title }}"
  message: |
    PR #{{ .body.number }}: {{ .body.pull_request.title }}
  slack:
    bot_token: "${SLACK_BOT_TOKEN}"
    app_token: "${SLACK_APP_TOKEN}"
    channel_id: "C1234567890"
    allowed_users:
      - "U0123456789"

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Slack fields

FieldRequiredDescription
bot_tokenYesYour Slack bot token (starts with xoxb-). Supports ${ENV_VAR}.
app_tokenYesYour Slack app-level token for Socket Mode (starts with xapp-). Supports ${ENV_VAR}.
channel_idYesThe Slack channel ID (e.g. C1234567890). Not the channel name.
allowed_usersNoList of Slack user IDs permitted to press approval buttons. If omitted, any workspace member can approve.
Your Slack app must have Socket Mode enabled and the chat:write, channels:history, and reactions:write bot scopes at minimum. Approval buttons also require the interactivity feature to be turned on.

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stdout

The stdout channel prints agent output directly to the Pylon process console. Useful for local development and testing. 
channel:
  type: stdout
No additional configuration is needed. Approval buttons are printed as text prompts in the terminal.

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Webhook

The webhook channel posts a JSON payload to any HTTP endpoint after the agent finishes. 
channel:
  type: webhook
Webhook channel configuration (endpoint URL, headers, etc.) is managed through the global config. Per-pylon webhook channel customization is not yet supported.

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Per-pylon channel overrides

The channel configured in pylon.yaml takes priority over the global default. You can mix and match — use Telegram as the global default and override specific pylons to post to Slack: 
# ~/.pylon/config.yaml
defaults:
  channel:
    type: telegram
    telegram:
      bot_token: "${TELEGRAM_BOT_TOKEN}"
      chat_id: 123456789

# ~/.pylon/pylons/pr-review/pylon.yaml
channel:
  type: slack
  slack:
    bot_token: "${SLACK_BOT_TOKEN}"
    app_token: "${SLACK_APP_TOKEN}"
    channel_id: "C1234567890"

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Coming soon

The following channels are planned but not yet available:
  • Discord
  • WhatsApp
  • iMessage