Hearth - Remote control [deprecated]

Hearth let you control the Empryo running on your computer from a Telegram or Discord chat. You sent it a task from your phone, got approval requests as buttons, and tapped to approve or deny.

Your code stayed on your machine. Hearth only made outgoing connections to the messaging service, and your computer had to be on and running Hearth.

Set it up in 4 stepsLink to this section

1. 1

   Start Hearth

   empryo hearth start

   Leave this running. It listens only on your machine, through a local socket that only your user can open.

2. 2

   Create a bot and save its token

   Create a bot with @BotFather on Telegram, or in the Discord Developer Portal. Then save its token:

   # Piping the token keeps it out of your shell history and process list
   cat token.txt | empryo hearth login telegram:<botId>

   The token is stored in your operating system's keychain, not in a config file.

3. 3

   Pair your chat

   empryo hearth pair telegram:<botId> --issue
   # prints a 6-character code

   Send your bot a direct message with the code:

   /pair ABC123

4. 4

   Start chatting

   Any message you send the bot now goes to Empryo as a prompt. When a tool call needs approval, you get Approve and Deny buttons.

Commands in the chatLink to this section

Plain text is sent as a prompt to the active tab. Commands start with /. The most useful ones:

/help in the chat lists the full set, including sessions, checkpoints, background agents, MCP servers and notification filters.

Command-line referenceLink to this section

empryo hearth start [--detach]                    # run Hearth (--detach: in the background)
empryo hearth stop                                # stop it
empryo hearth status                              # health and paired chats
empryo hearth login <surface>:<id> [token]        # save a bot token
empryo hearth pair <surface>:<id> --issue         # create a pairing code
empryo hearth pair <surface>:<id> <code>          # redeem a code from the command line
empryo hearth unpair <surface>:<id> <chatId>      # remove a chat's access
empryo hearth doctor                              # check your setup
empryo hearth logs [--follow]                     # show the log

Inside Empryo, /hearth opens a settings panel with the same controls. /hearth bind connects the current tab to a paired chat.

Keep it runningLink to this section

To keep Hearth available after you log out, install it as a background service from the /hearth settings panel. Empryo uses launchd on macOS, systemd on Linux and a scheduled task on Windows.

Or run it in the background yourself:

empryo hearth start --detach
empryo hearth stop

empryo hearth status shows whether it's running at any time.

Supported chat appsLink to this section

Messages from anyone else are ignored without a reply, so strangers can't tell the bot is active.

SecurityLink to this section

ConfigLink to this section

Hearth's settings live in ~/.empryo/hearth.json, and a project can add its own .empryo/hearth.json. Most people never edit it; the commands above manage it. Edit it directly for advanced setups, such as per-chat settings or extra file patterns to block (readDenylistExtra).

What Hearth doesn't doLink to this section

• No cloud service. Hearth connects your chat to your own computer. If your computer is off, Hearth is off.
• No WhatsApp. Its terms of service don't allow this kind of bot.
• One writer per tab. Several chats can read the same tab, but only one can send it work.