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Subhendu Das
Subhendu Das

Posted on • Originally published at bsky.app

I built a self-hosted alternative to Claude Code Channels -- here's why

#ai #claude #software #tools

When Claude Code Channels launched, I was stoked — Claude on my phone, finally. Then I hit the limitations:

  • Only Telegram and Discord. I live in WhatsApp (most of the world does).
  • Everything routes through Anthropic's servers. Fine for most people, but I work with clients who have strict data policies.
  • Requires Pro subscription. I was already spending less via API keys for my usage pattern.
  • No budget controls. I wanted to give Claude access to my team without worrying about runaway costs.

So I built Telechat — same idea (Claude on your phone), completely different architecture.

It's self-hosted. Runs as one process on your machine. Messages go from your phone → your server → Anthropic API → back. No relay, no middleware, no telemetry. Your conversations never touch any server I control.

4 platforms, not 2. Telegram, WhatsApp, Slack, and web chat. All from one process.

Smart model routing. This is the cost killer. Telechat looks at each message and routes it to the cheapest model that can handle it. "What time is it in Tokyo?" → Haiku ($0.001). "Review this PR" → Opus. In practice, ~70% of my messages hit Haiku or Sonnet. Saves about 60% vs always using Sonnet.

Per-user budget caps. Daily and monthly limits. 80% warning, hard cutoff at 100%. Essential when you're sharing with a team.

Desktop Bridge — this is the feature that keeps surprising people. When Claude Code is running on your desktop and wants to do something destructive (delete a file, run a risky command), you get a push notification on your phone. Tap approve or deny. Keep working from the couch while Claude codes at your desk.

Setup is literally:

npm install -g telechatai && telechat init
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Walk through the interactive setup, add your API key and bot tokens, done.

I'm not going to pretend it's better than Channels in every way. Channels wins on zero-setup convenience and being a first-party Anthropic product. But if you need WhatsApp, want self-hosted privacy, or care about cost control, give Telechat a look.

telechat.fyi | npm install -g telechatai | pip install telechatai

Happy to answer questions. Roast the architecture, I can take it.

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