Channels

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.

Channel fields

Field	Required	Description
`type`	No	Channel backend: `telegram`, `slack`, `stdout`, or `webhook`. Falls back to global default.
`approval`	No	When `true`, Pylon sends an approval notification before the agent runs.
`topic`	No	Thread or group subject line, rendered as a template.
`message`	No	Notification body, rendered as a template. Shown above approval buttons when `approval: true`.
`telegram`	No	Telegram-specific config. Required when `type: telegram`.
`slack`	No	Slack-specific config. Required when `type: slack`.

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.

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

Telegram fields

Field	Required	Description
`bot_token`	Yes	Your Telegram bot token from BotFather. Supports `${ENV_VAR}`.
`chat_id`	Yes	The chat or group ID where Pylon sends messages.
`allowed_users`	No	List 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.

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"

Slack fields

Field	Required	Description
`bot_token`	Yes	Your Slack bot token (starts with `xoxb-`). Supports `${ENV_VAR}`.
`app_token`	Yes	Your Slack app-level token for Socket Mode (starts with `xapp-`). Supports `${ENV_VAR}`.
`channel_id`	Yes	The Slack channel ID (e.g. `C1234567890`). Not the channel name.
`allowed_users`	No	List 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.

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.

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.

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"

Coming soon

The following channels are planned but not yet available:

Discord
WhatsApp
iMessage

Get Started

Concepts

YAML

Examples

Running

Channel fields

Approval flow

Telegram

Telegram fields

Slack

Slack fields

stdout

Webhook

Per-pylon channel overrides

Coming soon

​Channel fields

​Approval flow

​Telegram

​Telegram fields

​Slack

​Slack fields

​stdout

​Webhook

​Per-pylon channel overrides

​Coming soon

Channel fields

Approval flow

Telegram

Telegram fields

Slack

Slack fields

stdout

Webhook

Per-pylon channel overrides

Coming soon