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Authorized Users

6.1. Authorized Users — Who Is Allowed to Talk to the Agent

Safe by default: deny everyone

This is the root principle: by default, the gateway rejects every user who is not on the allowlist or has not yet paired via DM — the safe default for a bot with terminal access.

Per-platform allowlist configuration

TELEGRAM_ALLOWED_USERS=123456789,987654321
DISCORD_ALLOWED_USERS=123456789012345678
SIGNAL_ALLOWED_USERS=+155****4567
EMAIL_ALLOWED_USERS=trusted@example.com,colleague@work.com
# Or shared across all platforms:
GATEWAY_ALLOWED_USERS=123456789,987654321

What you must absolutely never do

# Do NOT set on a bot with terminal rights:
GATEWAY_ALLOW_ALL_USERS=true

This is explicitly described as a flag for test environments, not production — anyone who finds your bot can run commands on your server.

Notes

  • Use the actual numeric user ID of the real user account, not the prefix of the bot token — this confusion is the most common mistake when first configuring Telegram.
  • For email, the default is to ignore unidentified senders entirely, because a mailbox usually contains lots of unrelated mail — this behavior is deliberately different from the other chat platforms.
  • Per-platform configuration sections can override the global default — meaning you can keep pairing on for Telegram while leaving WhatsApp completely silent to strangers.