First start

Make your control bot, start ChatPilot in the background and follow the setup checklist.

After installing, three things are left before you open the panel: your control bot, two lines in the settings file, and starting ChatPilot as a background service. (The Windows install script asks for all of this itself; skip to The setup checklist.)

1. Make your control bot

The control bot is your own Telegram bot. ChatPilot uses it to reach you on your phone: alerts, drafts with a Send button, questions and daily summaries. It only answers you.

In Telegram, open @BotFather and send /newbot. Pick a name and a username; BotFather answers with a token.
Store the token (ChatPilot asks for it without showing what you type, and keeps it in your computer's secret store, never in a file):

uv run chatpilot secret set control_bot_token

2. Tell ChatPilot who you are

uv run chatpilot init wrote the settings file config.yaml (Mac and Linux: ~/.config/chatpilot/config.yaml, Windows: %APPDATA%\chatpilot\config.yaml). Open it in any text editor and set two lines:

owner_id under control: — your Telegram user id, a number. Ask @userinfobot in Telegram for it. The control bot ignores everyone else.
owner_name under triage: — your name, so ChatPilot knows which messages are yours.

Everything else in the file can stay as it is; it is commented line by line.

3. Start it

uv run chatpilot service install
uv run chatpilot open

The first line starts ChatPilot in the background: it starts again when you log in and restarts itself if it stops. The second opens the panel in your browser. The panel is a page on your own computer (127.0.0.1), not on the internet.

The setup checklist

The panel opens on Today with a checklist, Get ChatPilot going. Four steps are needed:

Link an account: WhatsApp, Telegram, Slack, a mailbox or iMessage.
Choose the chats ChatPilot may read: every chat starts off.
Choose the AI that sorts, summarises and writes drafts.
Try a draft: open a chat ChatPilot can read and press Draft. Nothing is sent until you press Send.

Under When you're ready (optional) follow auto-answer, a connected system and using the panel on your phone. Each step's button opens the right place, and a step ticks itself once it's done. A step that can't work yet says what has to come first.

When the four needed steps are done the checklist goes away. Hide puts it away earlier; Settings → Help: report a problem → Setup checklist brings it back.

The checklist also asks what you use ChatPilot for: see The panel at a glance.

Link your first account:

Everyday commands

Command	What it does
`uv run chatpilot open`	opens the panel
`uv run chatpilot service restart`	restarts ChatPilot, e.g. after you changed `config.yaml`
`uv run chatpilot service logs -f`	shows what ChatPilot is doing
`uv run chatpilot update`	installs the newest version

Checked against ChatPilot 0.1.0b1. Report a problem with this page