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Pipe Script Output to Messaging Platforms

alice send is a small, scriptable CLI that pushes a message to any messaging platform Alice is already configured for. Think of it as a cross-platform curl for notifications — you don't need a running gateway, you don't need an LLM, and you don't need to re-paste bot tokens into each of your scripts.

Use it for:

  • System monitoring (memory, disk, GPU temp, long-running job finished)
  • CI/CD notifications (deploy done, test failure)
  • Cron scripts that need to ping you with results
  • Quick one-shot messages from a terminal
  • Piping any tool's output anywhere (make | alice send --to slack:#builds)

The command reuses the same credentials and platform adapters that alice gateway already uses, so there's no second configuration surface to maintain.

Quick Start​

# Plain text to the home channel for a platform
alice send --to telegram "deploy finished"

# Pipe in stdout from anything
echo "RAM 92%" | alice send --to telegram:-1001234567890

# Send a file
alice send --to discord:#ops --file /tmp/report.md

# Attach a subject/header line
alice send --to slack:#eng --subject "[CI] build.log" --file build.log

# Thread target (Telegram topic, Discord thread)
alice send --to telegram:-1001234567890:17585 "threaded reply"

# List every configured target
alice send --list

# Filter by platform
alice send --list telegram

Argument Reference​

FlagDescription
-t, --to TARGETDestination. See target formats.
message (positional)Message text. Omit to read from --file or stdin.
-f, --file PATHRead the body from a file. --file - forces stdin.
-s, --subject LINEPrepend a header/subject line before the body.
-l, --listList available targets. Optional positional platform filter.
-q, --quietNo stdout on success (exit code only — ideal for scripts).
--jsonEmit the raw JSON result of the send.
-h, --helpShow the built-in help text.

Target Formats​

FormatExampleMeaning
platformtelegramSend to the platform's configured home channel
platform:chat_idtelegram:-1001234567890Specific numeric chat / group / user
platform:chat_id:thread_idtelegram:-1001234567890:17585Specific thread or Telegram forum topic
platform:#channeldiscord:#opsHuman-friendly channel name (resolved against the channel directory)
platform:+E164signal:+15551234567Phone-addressed platforms: Signal, SMS, WhatsApp

Any platform Alice ships adapters for works as a target: telegram, discord, slack, signal, sms, whatsapp, matrix, mattermost, feishu, dingtalk, wecom, weixin, email, and others.

Exit Codes​

CodeMeaning
0Send (or list) succeeded
1Delivery failed at the platform level (auth, permissions, network)
2Usage / argument / config error

Exit codes follow the standard Unix convention so your scripts can branch on them the same way they would on curl or grep.

Message Body Resolution​

alice send resolves the message body in this order:

  1. Positional argument — alice send --to telegram "hi"
  2. --file PATH — alice send --to telegram --file msg.txt
  3. Piped stdin — echo hi | alice send --to telegram

When stdin is a TTY (no pipe), Alice does not wait for input — you'll get a clear usage error instead. This keeps scripts from hanging if they accidentally omit the body.

Real-World Examples​

Monitoring: Memory / Disk Alerts​

Replace ad-hoc curl https://api.telegram.org/... calls in your watchdogs with a single portable line:

#!/usr/bin/env bash
ram_pct=$(free | awk '/^Mem:/ {printf "%d", $3 * 100 / $2}')
if [ "$ram_pct" -ge 85 ]; then
  alice send --to telegram --subject "⚠ MEMORY WARNING" \
    "RAM ${ram_pct}% on $(hostname)"
fi

Because alice send reuses your Alice config, the same script works on any host where Alice is installed — no need to export bot tokens into each machine's environment manually.

Don't alert the gateway about itself

For watchdogs that might fire when the gateway itself is struggling (OOM alerts, disk-full alerts), keep using a minimal curl call instead of alice send. If the Python interpreter can't load because the box is thrashing, you still want that alert to go out.

CI / CD: Build and Test Results​

# In .github/workflows/deploy.yml or any CI script
if ./scripts/deploy.sh; then
  alice send --to slack:#deploys "✓ ${CI_COMMIT_SHA:0:7} deployed"
else
  tail -n 100 deploy.log | alice send \
    --to slack:#deploys --subject "✗ deploy failed"
  exit 1
fi

Cron: Daily Report​

# Crontab entry
0 9 * * * /usr/local/bin/generate-metrics.sh \
  | /home/me/.alice/bin/alice send \
      --to telegram --subject "Daily metrics $(date +%Y-%m-%d)"

Long-Running Tasks: Ping When Done​

./train.py --epochs 200 && \
  alice send --to telegram "training done" || \
  alice send --to telegram "training failed (exit $?)"

Scripting with --json and --quiet​

# Hard-fail a script if delivery fails; don't clutter logs on success
alice send --to telegram --quiet "keepalive" || {
  echo "Telegram delivery failed" >&2
  exit 1
}

# Capture the message ID for later editing / threading
msg_id=$(alice send --to discord:#ops --json "build started" \
  | jq -r .message_id)

Does alice send Need the Gateway Running?​

Usually no. For any bot-token platform — Telegram, Discord, Slack, Signal, SMS, WhatsApp Cloud API, and most others — alice send calls the platform's REST endpoint directly using credentials from ~/.alice/.env and ~/.alice/config.yaml. It's a standalone subprocess that exits as soon as the message is delivered.

A live gateway is only required for plugin platforms that rely on a persistent adapter connection (for example, a custom plugin that keeps a long-lived WebSocket open). In that case you'll get a clear error pointing at the gateway; start it with alice gateway start and retry.

Listing and Discovering Targets​

Before sending to a specific channel, you can inspect what's available:

# Every target across every configured platform
alice send --list

# Just Telegram targets
alice send --list telegram

# Machine-readable
alice send --list --json

The listing is built from ~/.alice/channel_directory.json, which the gateway refreshes every few minutes while it's running. If you see "no channels discovered yet", start the gateway once (alice gateway start) so it can populate the cache.

Human-friendly names (discord:#ops, slack:#engineering) are resolved against this cache at send time, so you don't need to memorize numeric IDs.

Comparison with Other Approaches​

ApproachMulti-platformReuses Alice credsNeeds gatewayBest for
alice send✓✓No (bot-token)Everything below
Raw curl to each platformEach scripted separatelyManualNoCritical watchdogs
cron job with --deliver✓✓NoScheduled agent tasks

alice send is intentionally the simplest possible surface. If you need an agent to decide what to say, schedule a cron job — the agent's final response is auto-delivered to the configured deliver: target (the agent no longer fires messages itself). If you need a scheduled run with LLM-generated content, use cronjob(action='create', prompt=...) with deliver='telegram:...'. If you just need to pipe a raw string, reach for alice send.