Claude Code Channels: Push External Events Into Your Coding Session from Telegram and Discord

Claude Code Channels: External Events Pushed Into Your Coding Session

Claude Code v2.1.80 introduces Channels in research preview — a fundamentally new communication model for the tool. Where previous releases focused on what Claude Code can do inside a terminal session, Channels opens up the boundary between a running session and the outside world. An MCP server that supports the channel protocol can push messages directly into Claude Code, allowing external systems, humans on mobile devices, and third-party platforms to interact with an active agent in real time.

How Channels Work

A channel is an MCP server that emits events into a running Claude Code session. Sessions opt into receiving those events by listing the relevant MCP server name in the --channels CLI flag at startup. Channels can be one-way (push-only) or two-way: Claude can read an incoming event and reply back through the same channel, creating a full chat bridge.

Supported use cases in the research preview include:

• Sending coding instructions to Claude Code from a Telegram or Discord message while away from the terminal
• Forwarding CI/CD results, monitoring alerts, or webhook payloads so Claude can react autonomously
• Receiving proactive notifications from Claude — such as progress updates, completed tasks, or requests for human decisions — as native Telegram or Discord messages with file attachments

The fakechat demo server ships as a zero-setup local browser UI for testing the feature without any external account.

Official Telegram and Discord Plugins

Anthropic published two official Channels-compatible MCP plugins alongside the release: a Telegram plugin and a Discord plugin, both available in the claude-plugins-official GitHub repository. Both require Bun as a runtime, a claude.ai account (API key authentication is not supported for Channels), and Claude Code v2.1.80 or later.

Once configured, a developer can DM a personal Telegram bot and have the message land inside their running Claude Code session — with Claude's response sent back to the same Telegram thread. Telegram's 50 MB file transfer limit and Discord's multi-file attachment support extend to Claude's replies, so agents can send back generated files, logs, or diffs directly to a mobile device.

Admin Controls

Enterprise and team admins can enable or disable the feature via the channelsEnabled managed settings key, or from the claude.ai Admin settings panel under Claude Code → Channels. Individual users control which MCP servers are permitted to push events per session using the --channels flag — listing a server in .mcp.json alone is insufficient by design, preventing unintended push access.

Current Status

The feature is explicitly marked as a research preview. An active issue in the Claude Code GitHub tracker notes that notifications/claude/channel events are not always routed into the active conversation on all configurations; the team is tracking this. The feature is expected to graduate out of preview in a subsequent release.

Other Changes in v2.1.80

Alongside Channels, v2.1.80 resolves several significant bugs. A fix addresses --resume sessions dropping parallel tool results — conversations with concurrent tool calls now correctly restore all tool_use/tool_result pairs instead of showing [Tool result missing] placeholders. Voice mode WebSocket failures caused by Cloudflare bot detection on non-browser TLS fingerprints are resolved. API proxy compatibility is improved with a fix for 400 errors through Bedrock, Vertex, and custom gateways when using fine-grained tool streaming. Startup memory usage on large repositories (250k+ files) is reduced by approximately 80 MB.