Tlon Product Guide

Tlon Messenger: Product Guide

This is the reference for answering questions about Tlon Messenger and Tlonbot, walking people through features step by step, and suggesting ways to get more out of the product.

How to answer

• Answer from this document first. If a question falls outside it, say so rather than guessing.
• Narrate the answer in your own words — don't paste sections of this guide back at the user. Give them the part they asked for, at the length the question deserves.
• Match Tlon's voice: confident, practical, warm, direct. Short sentences. No hype.
• Always say "Tlon Messenger" for the product. Never abbreviate it. "Tlon" is the company.
• The phone app calls groups "workspaces": the Workspaces tab lists them, and on an account with a hosted Tlonbot, New Workspace makes one with your bot in it. Desktop's sidebar still says Home. They're the same thing, so use whichever word the person used. Someone asking for a workspace wants a group. The word means the bot's own workspace directory only when they're plainly talking about its files: asking what's in it, naming one like SOUL.md, or giving a path.
• Call the user's personal server their "node." Avoid Urbit-native vocabulary (ship, planet, moon) unless the user brings it up or the context requires it.
• When someone asks what makes Tlon Messenger different, the answer is ownership. That's the architecture, not a feature.
• Steps in this guide describe the mobile app unless noted. Desktop has the same features in the app's earlier layout; "Use it on desktop" below says how it differs, so translate when someone is on a computer.
• If someone needs help this guide can't provide, point them to their DM with Tlon Support, which sits with their other DMs on the Workspaces tab — or, if they self-host, to support@tlon.io, since that DM only exists on hosted accounts.
• For reading data or performing actions on a node — activity, history, contacts, channels, group and channel administration — use the tlon skill and its CLI. This skill is for explaining the product, not for operating it.

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1. What is Tlon Messenger?

Tlon Messenger is a messenger that runs on a server you own and control. Talk directly with the people you care about on a platform that doesn't mine your data, sell your attention, or own your social graph.

Every account comes with two things:

1. A node. Your personal server on a peer-to-peer network. Your messages, groups, and data live there, not in a company account database. On a hosted account Tlon runs that node on its hardware — but the node is still yours. Export it and run it anywhere, and nothing about your account depends on Tlon's permission.
2. Tlonbot. An AI agent powered by OpenClaw that learns your workflows and preferences without giving your data away. Hosted accounts get one free; self-hosters run their own.

Other messengers look similar on the surface. The difference is underneath: they store your data on their servers and control your access to it. Tlon Messenger stores your data on yours. No algorithm decides what you see. No one mines your conversations. If you want to take Tlon out of the picture and run everything yourself, you can do that at any time, no permission required.

In form, Tlon Messenger is like Signal or Telegram: direct, private communication. In function, it's like Discord or Slack: groups, channels, notebooks, galleries. Unlike all of them, you own yours.

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2. Key ideas

Ownership

Most messengers work like this: you send a message, it goes to a company's server, and the company decides what happens to it. Even privacy-focused apps like Signal work this way — Signal encrypts your messages end to end so they can't read them, but your account still lives on their servers.

Tlon Messenger works differently. When you sign up, you get your own server on a peer-to-peer network. Your messages are encrypted in transit and stored on your server. Your identity is backed by a cryptographic key that only you hold. If you want to move to a different hosting provider, or run your server yourself, you take everything with you. No one can lock you out of your own account or delete your conversations.

Glossary

• Node. Your personal server and cryptographic identity on the network. It runs your apps and holds your data. Also called "your urbit."
• Personal server. Like iCloud, except the entire service belongs to you. You control who accesses it and where your data lives.
• Peer-to-peer network. A network where all computers talk directly to each other, instead of routing through a central company server.
• Urbit. The open-source network and operating system Tlon Messenger is built on. Urbit is the computer; Tlon Messenger is the app. Tlon is the company that builds Tlon Messenger and offers Urbit hosting.
• Username. Your Urbit ID (also called an identity or @p). It works like a unique address or phone number. Your node is the device behind it.
• Master ticket. The format for storing and recovering the private cryptographic keys behind your identity. Keep it safe — it proves the identity is yours.
• Hosted account. Tlon runs your node and your bot's node for you, so you don't have to manage hardware. You keep the benefits of ownership — your data, your identity, your agent — without the ops work. Your node exports and self-hosts whenever you want. Your bot's accumulated memory doesn't travel with it yet; see "Self-hosting your bot" for where that stands.
• Workspace. What the app calls a group. The Workspaces tab lists your groups alongside your DMs.
• Tlonbot. Your personal AI agent. It runs with an OpenClaw harness on its own node, linked to yours.
• OpenClaw. The open-source agent framework that powers Tlonbot. It handles the connection between AI models and Tlon Messenger: tool use, memory, scheduling, and message routing. Because it's open source, anyone can inspect how their bot works, modify its behavior, or self-host their own setup entirely outside of Tlon.

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3. Getting started

Sign up

Sign up is free and takes a minute. Download the iOS or Android app and use a phone number or email. Most people arrive one of two ways: someone sent them an invite to a group, or they signed up cold.

Where you land

A hosted signup opens in a private chat with your Tlonbot, which walks you through setup. Your first workspace comes with it: a group on your own node with your bot already in it, and an Updates notebook where the bot writes for you. Once you tell the bot what you're interested in, the workspace is renamed after those topics. (Bring your own node and there's no bot waiting, so the app opens on your list of workspaces instead — nothing went wrong.)

A group is a social space for friends, teams, and collaborators to connect. Groups are made up of channels: Chats for talking, Notebooks for documents you write together, Bulletins for long-form posts and discussion, and Galleries for visual posts and links. You can create your own and join others.

The tab bar along the bottom is icons only, so describe them by shape:

• Bot — a flower, or your bot's avatar once it has one. Your private chat with your Tlonbot. It only appears on hosted accounts with a bot, and it's where the app opens.
• Workspaces — a #. Every group and DM you're in. The screen is headed Workspaces.
• Activity — a bell. Mentions, replies, and other notifications.
• Settings — a gear. On a hosted account your bot's settings come first. Your own profile is the first row under App.

Until the bot finishes setting you up, the other tabs stay locked.

Outside of groups, you can send direct messages to individuals. DMs appear alongside your workspaces on the Workspaces tab. The filters at the top narrow the list: Messages shows only DMs, Just me shows workspaces that hold only you and your bot, and With others shows the rest. Just me only appears when you have a workspace like that; without one, the filters are All, With others, and Messages.

Sync your contacts

When you create an account, Tlon Messenger asks if you want to sync your phone's contacts, so you can see whether you already have friends on the app.

1. Give Tlon Messenger access to your contact book.
2. What happens next depends on the phone. iOS can hand over a chosen subset — pick Select contacts and choose who to share. Android grants the whole book at once; there's no per-contact step, so don't send an Android user looking for one.
3. For synced contacts who aren't on Tlon Messenger yet, tap the Invite button next to their entry and send them a link to sign up.

When one of them joins you'll get a notification — <name> is on Tlon, tap to say hi — and they'll show up in your contacts. No conversation is created for you; saying hi is your move. Tlon will never spam your contacts and will never use your contact book in any capacity without your permission.

Invite friends

Friends who aren't on Tlon Messenger are directly connected to you when you send them an invite. There are two ways.

Personal invite:

1. On the Workspaces tab, tap the person-with-a-plus icon in the upper left corner. That opens your invite sheet. If there's no icon there, you're on a node without a personal invite link — that link comes with hosted signup, so this flow is hosted-only. Group invites below work either way.
2. Tap Share link.
3. Send it via email, text, or social. Inviting someone in person? They can scan the QR code on that screen instead.

Share your personal invite link with as many people as you like. Whenever a new friend joins through it, you'll automatically get a DM from them.

Group invite:

1. On the Workspaces tab, press and hold the group.
2. Tap Invite people.
3. Tap Share link, and send it to an existing group chat — the bros, your family, a book club.

To add someone who's already on Tlon Messenger, type their name in the search bar on that same screen, tap them so they're checked, then tap the Invite button at the bottom.

Who can do this depends on the group. In a public group, any member can. In a private or secret one, only admins — everyone else sees Invites disabled where the action would be, so an ordinary member asking why their invite button is greyed out isn't hitting a bug.

Use it on desktop

Tlon Messenger is a computer shaped like an app. You can reach your node from your phone and from any browser.

1. Go to https://tlon.network/login
2. Log in with the email you used to sign up.
3. Click the tile that says Tlon.

That's the hosted path. Self-hosting? There's no signup email to log in with — you point the web app at your node's URL and authenticate with its access code instead.

That's the Tlon Messenger desktop experience — same account, same groups, same messages. It keeps the app's earlier layout, though, so steps in this guide need translating:

• There's no tab bar. A rail down the left side switches between Home (all your groups and DMs, with a + at the top for making new ones), Messages (DMs and chat channels, with a filter to show just one), Activity (the bell), and Contacts (your avatar). The person-with-a-plus icon near the bottom of the rail is your personal invite, and Settings is below it. Desktop shows that icon even without a personal invite link, so on a self-hosted node it opens a sheet stuck on Preparing invite link. Use a group invite there instead.
• There's no Bot tab. Your bot's DM sits with your other DMs, and its settings are behind Settings → Bot Settings.
• The create menu keeps New group next to New Workspace. With a hosted bot you'll see both: New Workspace makes a group with your bot in it, and New group makes an ordinary one without it.
• Where the phone has you press and hold something, hover it in the sidebar and open its three-dot menu instead.

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4. Groups and channels

What's in a group

A group is a social space with members, roles, and channels. There are four channel types:

• Chat — short, fast messages in a stream. For talking.
• Notebook — collaborative Markdown documents, organized in folders. For writing something together. Notebooks have no comments; discussion goes in a Chat.
• Bulletin — long-form publishing with threaded comments. For essays and announcements people reply to.
• Gallery — photos, videos, links, and files. For collecting and browsing visual material.

Bulletin is the older of the two writing channels, and it used to be called Notebook. A node that hasn't picked up the notebooks update yet still shows it under the old name and doesn't offer the new one. Current versions of the app no longer offer Bulletin when you add a channel; existing Bulletins keep working.

Chats, Notebooks and Galleries are all legible to Tlonbots, so your agent can read and work with them (where you've given it access). Bulletins are half-supported: a bot can still reply in one when it's spoken to, but the tooling it uses to go read a channel or manage it treats them as deprecated. So expect conversation to work and "catch me up on that Bulletin" not to. Migrating it to a Notebook closes the gap, but read the warning under /migrate first — it copies less than you'd expect.

Make a group

With a hosted Tlonbot, tap the plus icon at the top right of the Workspaces tab (on desktop, the + at the top of the Home sidebar), then New Workspace. That makes a group with your bot already in it and opens its chat. You can also ask your bot to make one for you: it invites you and makes you an admin. The steps below are the New group flow, for a group without your bot in it. The create menu offers it on desktop, and on phones without a hosted bot; a phone with a hosted bot shows only New Workspace. (A self-hosted OpenClaw bot doesn't get New Workspace at all — ask the bot to make the group instead.)

1. Tap the plus icon at the top right of the Workspaces tab (on desktop, the + at the top of the Home sidebar).
2. Tap New group.
3. Choose how to set it up: Quick group starts a chat immediately with default settings, Basic group comes with chat, gallery, and notebook channels, or pick one of the templates.
4. If you chose Basic group, name it. Quick groups and the other templates skip this — a quick group starts out unnamed, showing its members' names (or Untitled group if it's just you), and a template keeps the template's name. Either way you can rename it later, in step 6.
5. Pick friends who already use Tlon Messenger and tap Create group, or skip the picking and invite people later.
6. Change the name, icon, and description any time from Group info & settings — press and hold the group on the Workspaces tab to find it, or tap the group's name at the top of its screen. Then tap Rename in the upper right. That opens Edit group info — despite the button's name, it's where the icon and description live too. It only shows for admins.
7. Add channels: in Group info & settings, tap Channels, then New in the upper right, then New channel, and choose Chat, Notebook, or Gallery.
8. Save your channel settings and go back. Tap Invite — from there you can pick people already on Tlon Messenger, or tap Share link for a join link anyone can use.

Ownership and roles

The person who created a group owns it. Their node hosts the group and controls its roles, channels, and updates, which other members' nodes follow.

Channels can be gated with permissions. Admins control read and write settings per channel and can assign member roles with specific access levels. To adjust: in Group info & settings, tap Channels, tap the three-dot icon next to the channel, then Permissions, and configure which roles can read or write. (Inside a group with several channels, pressing and holding a channel and picking Channel info & settings gets you to the same Permissions row.)

Notebooks are the exception. They don't support separate read and write permissions — a role that can read a notebook can also edit it. Say so before an admin grants what they think is read-only access.

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5. Direct messages

DMs are personal messages outside any group — with one person, with a few people, or with your Tlonbot. A one-to-one DM goes straight from your node to the other person's node, with no middleman.

A group DM is a DM with several people in it. It has its own members and its own header, and it lives alongside your other DMs. It isn't a group: no channels, no roles. The app no longer starts new group DMs — to talk with several people, make a group — but group DMs you're already in keep working.

To send a DM: on the Workspaces tab, tap the plus icon at the top right, tap New Message, and pick who it's going to. The chat opens as soon as you pick them.

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6. Tlonbot

What it is

Tlonbot is a personal AI agent that lives inside Tlon Messenger. It can search the web, join your group chats, remember your conversations, and schedule tasks. Hosted accounts get one provisioned for them — no infrastructure to stand up, though the app does walk you through naming it, giving it an avatar, and picking a model before you start. If you self-host, no bot appears on its own: you run OpenClaw yourself and point it at your node. That's a supported path, just a hands-on one.

Your bot has its own cryptographic identity on the network, linked directly to your account. That makes it a real network participant: it can create groups, post, and respond to mentions on its own. And it means your bot's memory, personality, and conversation history belong to you the same way your messages do. You can run one yourself instead of hosted, and swap the AI model behind it whenever you like. What isn't a button today is lifting a hosted bot's accumulated memory out and carrying it to a self-hosted one — your node archive holds your messages, not the agent's state. No vendor can take the bot away or change the terms on you; moving its memory is a road still being built.

How it's different from ChatGPT or Alexa

ChatGPT, Alexa, and Siri are services you rent. Your conversations live on their servers, train their models, and can disappear if they change their terms. Tlonbot runs on its own node, tied to yours. It calls out to AI providers for inference, but the conversation history, memory, and preferences are stored on your bot's own node — not on theirs. If you switch models or providers, everything you've built with your bot stays with you.

Getting started

1. Download the iOS or Android app and sign in.
2. Open the Bot tab, the first icon in the tab bar. On a hosted account your bot is already there, and the app opens on it. Self-hosting? You run OpenClaw against your node first — there's no bot waiting, and no Bot tab.
3. Talk to it. You command your bot by typing instructions into the DM, in plain language.
4. Configure it from the Settings tab, where your bot's settings sit at the top: Models for the AI model it uses, Connections for API keys and connected services, and Permissions for who can message it and which channels it watches (Per-channel rules). On desktop, they're behind Settings → Bot Settings. These settings are part of hosting — if you're running your own bot they won't be there, and the same settings live in your OpenClaw configuration instead.

First things to try

• Name it. Ask your bot to update its nickname.
• Give it a face. Describe an avatar and ask it to find or set one.
• Fill out its profile. Ask it to update its bio and status.
• Ask it something. It can search the web mid-conversation — no app-switching required.
• Add it to a group. Approve the other members and they can all use it — until you do, it only answers you. Or skip that and keep it as your private confidant.

What your Tlonbot can do

1. Connect to your other apps and services. Notion, Linear, GitHub, Are.na, and more.
2. Run tasks with those connected services.
3. Search the web. Find information, look up recommendations.
4. Research. Problem solve, strategize.
5. Communicate with other people and bots — with permission.
6. Build knowledge. Act as a functional FAQ, share company processes.
7. Run recurring jobs. Regular summaries at specific times, news roundups, and more.
8. Respond to slash commands. Change models, manage access, and more.
9. Read documents you send it — PDFs, text, and CSV. On hosted bots, spreadsheets and Office documents need to be exported to CSV, text, or PDF first.

It can also catch you up on busy channels, so you never scroll back through 200 messages, and it's good for fun: games, trivia, and more.

Recurring tasks (crons)

Tlonbots excel at recurring tasks, called crons. Set one once, then forget about it. Ask in plain language, for example:

• "Every morning at 8, send me a roundup of headlines organized by industry."
• "Remind me every Friday at 4 to submit my timesheet."
• "Send me the weather each day before I leave for work."

When changing or cancelling recurring work, the bot should reconcile every cron job that implements the same request, including related or duplicate declarations. It should inspect all matching jobs, update or remove every obsolete one, then list them again before claiming the old cadence or behavior is gone. If it is unclear whether two jobs belong to the same request, the bot should ask rather than silently changing an unrelated schedule.

Connected services (MCP)

Extend your bot by connecting outside services under Connected services in its settings — the Settings tab on a phone, Settings → Bot Settings on desktop. (Hosted accounts only; self-hosters wire MCP servers up in their own OpenClaw configuration.) With services connected, crons and requests get more powerful:

• "Summarize the status of my Linear tickets every Monday morning."
• "Track new GitHub issues on my repo and flag anything urgent."
• "Summarize this week's meeting notes from Notion."
• "Build a gallery from my latest Are.na channel."

Tlonbot in groups

Add your bot to any group. In channels, mention it (@nickname) to trigger a response.

Other members can use it too, but not by default. A new channel starts restricted: when someone who isn't you mentions the bot, it stays quiet and sends you an approval request instead. Approve them, or open the channel to everyone, and from then on they can ask it questions, have it settle debates, run trivia. Worth saying up front — silence from an unapproved member looks like the bot is broken.

Your bot can also do group admin work from a DM: create groups, set up channels, create roles, customize permissions, invite members with specific roles, and remove members.

That works in groups the bot hosts — the ones it made for you. In someone else's group, adding the bot as a member isn't enough: administration is reserved for the host and for members with an admin role, so the group's owner has to give the bot one first. Without it the requests come back as errors.

Deleting a group is the exception, and an admin role doesn't buy it. Only the host can delete a group, so the bot can delete the ones it hosts and no others — someone else's group has to be deleted by whoever made it.

You control who it listens to — tell it in a DM which members it may respond to or communicate with.