Abstract: If your OpenClaw assistant is controlled through Telegram, routing is one of the most important safety decisions you make. Private DMs, group chats, and support channels have different trust levels, but many setups treat them the same and then wonder why mistakes spread. This guide explains a practical SetupClaw pattern: separate routes by trust, attach different tool and approval policies to each route, and use explicit escalation paths so automation stays fast without becoming fragile.
The problem usually starts small. You launch one agent, connect Telegram, and everything flows into the same context. It feels efficient for a week. Then group noise leaks into operational decisions, a risky action is requested in the wrong channel, or an ambiguous prompt reaches tools that were meant for private admin use.
That is why routing is not a convenience feature. It is a boundary. In SetupClaw terms, routing decides which context, tools, and permissions apply before the model starts doing anything.
Start with trust zones, not agent count
People often ask, “How many agents should we run?” I think the better first question is, “How many trust zones do we have?”
A practical starting baseline is two zones: one high-trust private zone for owner DMs and operational commands, and one lower-trust collaborative zone for groups or support-style discussions.
Once you define those zones, architecture choices become straightforward. High-trust routes can have broader capabilities with explicit approvals. Lower-trust routes should default to reading, summarising, and proposing, not executing high-impact actions.
Channel controls should gate traffic before routing logic
Telegram controls are the first filter and they should be strict by default.
Allowlists limit who can trigger each route. DM policy controls whether direct chats are open or paired/approved only. Mention-gating in groups ensures the assistant responds only when intentionally invoked.
These controls do not replace route design, but they reduce noisy or untrusted triggers before the message reaches any agent. They also do not protect against a compromised trusted account, so account hygiene still matters.
Route-to-agent mapping should be explicit
A reliable pattern is deterministic mapping from source context to agent policy.
Private DM routes map to a main or admin-capable agent, still with guardrails, but with the permissions needed for trusted operations. Group or support routes map to a tighter agent with narrower tool access, stricter execution boundaries, and smaller workspace scope.
This is where most safety gains happen. You prevent low-trust contexts from inheriting high-trust power by default.
Approval gates should follow impact, not source alone
Approvals are not about slowing everything down. They are about slowing only the actions that can cause expensive mistakes.
Risky actions, shell commands, network changes, file mutations, external sends, repository writes, should require explicit approval or a PR-only path, especially on lower-trust routes. Low-risk actions, answering, summarising, collecting context, can remain fast.
The result is practical: speed where safe, friction where necessary.
Escalation paths prevent policy drift
Without a defined escalation path, teams usually over-permission group agents to avoid handoffs. That feels convenient and quietly erodes safety.
A better design is to let the group/support agent gather context and draft a proposal, then escalate to a private route or human checkpoint for privileged execution.
So you keep collaborative responsiveness, but execution authority stays anchored to higher-trust contexts.
Memory should follow route intent
Routing policy is not only about tools. It also affects memory quality.
Private, durable decisions belong in curated long-term memory. Group chatter is often transient and should not become durable memory by default. If you do not separate this, retrieval quality drops over time because low-signal conversation pollutes operational context.
This is one of those details people notice only after months, when memory searches return lots of noise.
Cron and routing should reinforce each other
Scheduled work benefits from the same boundary logic. Background cron jobs should usually run in isolated sessions and only escalate to main/private routes when necessary.
And if scheduled workflows can influence code or configuration, keep PR-only controls in place. Routing controls where requests flow. PR-only controls how changes are finalised.
Reliable scheduling without change gates can still produce reliable damage.
Practical implementation steps
Step one: create a routing matrix
Before editing config, define a simple table for each source: source channel, target agent, tool policy, approval rule, escalation target, and memory behaviour.
Step two: start with two agents
Implement one private/main agent and one group/support agent first. Add complexity only when a specific workflow needs it.
Step three: apply Telegram gates first
Set allowlists, DM policy, and group mention-gating before tuning prompts or tools. This removes obvious noise and unauthorized triggers early.
Step four: tighten lower-trust tool policy
For group/support routes, default to propose-and-summarise behaviour. Restrict direct mutation actions unless there is explicit approval.
Step five: define escalation and approval criteria
Write down which actions must escalate and which can execute in place. Keep this in handoff documentation, not in memory alone.
Step six: run a weekly route review in month one
Track wrong-route incidents, escalation latency, denied high-risk actions, and memory-noise incidents. Early review catches drift before it becomes normalised.
What this gives you in day-to-day operations
The value is not complexity, it is containment. You can still operate quickly in Telegram, still collaborate in groups, and still run practical automations, but the blast radius of mistakes becomes smaller and more predictable.
That boundary-first model is exactly what SetupClaw Basic Setup (£249) is meant to establish: a secure-by-default assistant that remains usable as team traffic and automation scope grow, with a clear operating pattern your team can maintain after handoff.