Hermes Agent seems to be unable to see everyone talking in the Telegram group, and the official documentation directly marks this issue as "the most common source of confusion": BotFather's privacy mode is turned on by default. In this state, the bot can usually only see commands, reply to its own messages, or certain service messages, and cannot receive normal group chat texts at all.
How to repair
- Go to BotFather to find your bot.
- Go to Bot Settings → Group Privacy → to turn off privacy mode.
- Focus: After the change, remove the robot from the group and then pull it back into the group. Telegram will cache its privacy status when it joins the group, and it will often not take effect without repulling.
- If you don't want to turn off privacy mode globally, you can also set the bot as a group administrator.
What else to check
Even if the group message is visible, TELEGRAM_ALLOWED_USERS still has to allow the person who sent the message, otherwise the Hermes Agent will still refuse to trigger. What can be seen in the group does not mean that it must be enforced.
In a word: if you don't reply in the Telegram group, the first suspect is always the privacy mode; The second is the allowlist.
Official open source address: https://github.com/NousResearch/hermes-agent; Official document entrance: https://hermes-agent.nousresearch.com/.
