Getting a US number's texts in Telegram

How the connection is made

Cleat runs its own Telegram bot, with its own token and its own name. You connect an account by opening a one-time link rather than typing anything into a chat (Telegram):

1. 01In Settings, ask for a Telegram link. Cleat generates a one-time code and hands you a t.me link carrying it.
2. 02Open it. Telegram describes exactly this mechanism: “In private chats, you can use the start parameter to automatically pass any value to your bot whenever a user presses the link.”
3. 03The bot receives that code, matches it to your account, and the chat is connected.
4. 04The link expires in 15 minutes. Ask for another if you were slow; an unused code is worth nothing on its own.

Disconnecting is one click in Settings, which clears the chat from your account. One Telegram account connects to one Cleat account.

What a message looks like

Plain text, deliberately — formatting would mean escaping every possible message body perfectly, and a mangled verification code is worse than an unstyled one. A message carries the code on its own first line when one was found, then the full text, then where it came from and which line it arrived on.

Who in the team receives them

Each person connects their own Telegram account, and each person decides whether to. Someone who connects receives the texts for every line in that workspace, not a line they choose — so a workspace with several numbers sends all of them to everyone who opted in.

Nothing is forwarded to someone whose account the team has disabled. How a team shares one number covers the rest of that arrangement, and the developer notes cover the webhook if you would rather have the text in code.

What this is not

• Not a phone. You cannot reply from Telegram, and the line cannot send a text or place a call. It receives.
• Not a replacement for the inbox. Telegram is an extra copy. The inbox is where every text is kept, and where you go if a delivery failed.
• Not retried. A channel that fails is recorded and not attempted again. The text is still in the inbox and still readable through the API.
• Not an emergency line. No 911, by text or by call.
• Not a way to hide who owns the number. Every line has an identity-verified owner; what we hold and who can read it is the detail.

Calls arrive here too

An incoming call is transcribed and delivered on the same channels as a text, so a code read out by an automated call reaches Telegram as a message. What each kind of verification call expects explains why that works for some flows and what happens with the ones that ask for a key to be pressed.

If you are here about registering Telegram itself

That is the other question, and it deserves a straight answer rather than a sales pitch. Telegram publishes that accounts “can only be connected to a mobile number” and that it does not support landline numbers (Telegram). A Cleat line is a real US mobile line rather than an internet one, which is why it gets through screens that reject VoIP — but no provider can promise a particular service accepts a particular number, and we are not going to pretend otherwise. How line type decides what a service accepts is the mechanism.

A line costs $24.99 a month and you can cancel it yourself, so if that is the deciding factor, test it in the first month.