WhatsApp and Telegram groups

On the screen: the list and the two decisions

The list of groups Orion appears in is split by channel: the WhatsApp ones are on the Connection page, below the numbers, in the WhatsApp groups block; the Telegram ones are at Orion → Telegram, in the Telegram groups block. Each group carries two independent decisions — one switches on and off, the other has three positions — and it is worth understanding the difference before you click:

Participation

authorizes Orion to reply there. The Authorize button shows up on the row of any group, on either channel, and asks for a confirmation before it takes effect — you are putting an artificial intelligence, and a record, inside a room full of people who signed nothing, and the deal is that you tell them. No group is authorized by default; you authorize them one by one, and only after a group is authorized do the reply policy and the group role field appear, where you write a persona just for that group. One difference worth knowing today: this switch really governs WhatsApp groups. In a Telegram group the authorization is saved, but it is not yet what decides whether the bot speaks — it replies when the message reaches it, with no reply policy and no tools in that turn. The category, right below, is another switch: what it decides about capture already applies on both channels. Without a subscription — yours —, Orion stays silent in groups, even when called, and the reason is recorded in Governance.

Category (WhatsApp and Telegram): says what kind of group it is. There are three positions, and you pick one on the group's row:

• Regular (the default): nothing in the content is captured. If Orion takes part there, it answers from public knowledge only — the documents marked as 🌐 Public — and nothing from the group goes into the organization's library.
• 🏢 Internal work (company colleagues only): the content starts being captured and may be shared with other people in the company. In return, Orion uses the organization's internal knowledge there, documents can be filed in the library, and you work on the work plan right from there.
• 🤝 External work (clients, partners): the content is captured, including what the people from outside write. Orion uses only public knowledge, files something into the library only when you ask, and the work plan is not accessible from that group.

The category is not retroactive, you change or withdraw it whenever you want, and Orion itself writes in the group to say what changed — with a different text for each case. Withdrawing stops the capture from that moment on; what has already been captured stays stored. And on Telegram the capture is partial by default: with the bot's group privacy on (BotFather's default), only mentions and replies to the bot reach it.

One does not imply the other: a group can be captured without Orion replying in it, and it can reply without being captured. And undoing one does not undo the other — revoking participation does not remove the category, and the capture goes on. How it works in a group is right below, and the privacy part is in the security and privacy chapter.

How it works in a group

In a group, Orion talks to people who are not you. Taking part and capturing are two separate switches, and neither turns itself on.

When Orion is on your own number, it records the groups where traffic passes — only the name and the date of the last activity. None of the content. You see that list in Orion → Connection, in the "WhatsApp groups" block, and you can also ask in chat: "which groups are you seeing?".

Authorizing a group is what changes the game. The screen asks for confirmation and says what will now happen, because the decision affects other people: an AI starts taking part in a room where nobody signed anything.

There is a second switch, and it is independent of this one. Every group has a category, and it does not make Orion reply there. There are three, and you pick one on the group's own row:

The category exists only on screen (never through a chat command, precisely so the warning it shows is not skipped), it applies from that point on and is never retroactive, and you change it or withdraw it whenever you want. Regular group: zero work capture. And filing into a deliverable is creating in Y Managers: without a subscription, nothing goes into the deliverable, and the material stays in the conversation.

And the one who tells the group is Orion, not you. When you mark it, when you change the category and when you withdraw it, it posts a message inside the group saying what changed, who changed it and when. The text is different in each case: the external-group one announces that the group is external, that the content is now captured, that Orion uses only public knowledge there and that it files things only at your request. (The one that spells out that what clients and partners write also comes in is the confirmation on screen, before you mark it.) Clicking the category that was already in force changes nothing and posts no notice. Every attempt stays in the audit trail, including when the notice cannot go out — the notice is the best effort possible, not a guarantee.

Withdrawing does not erase. Capture stops at once, but what was already captured stays stored, with the same retention as the rest of the company's data.

On Telegram the same category applies, with a limit that comes from Telegram itself. With the bot's group privacy on — BotFather's default — only mentions and replies to the bot reach it, and only that is captured. For full capture, you have to turn privacy off in BotFather (/setprivacy → Disable).

The detail is in the security and privacy chapter.

How it gets triggered. Only when called. @orion anywhere in the message counts, as does "Orion," or "Orion:" at the start of the sentence, or a reply that quotes one of its messages — quoting Orion is talking to Orion. The name "Orion" loose in the middle of a conversation triggers nothing. And only while you, the owner of that Orion, have a subscription: without one, it stays silent in the group, and the audit trail records why.

When called, it acknowledges right away ("Got it! I'm looking at it and I'll be back here in ~2-3 min") and answers next. Every message it sends goes out signed 🤖 Orion (AI manager) — it never passes itself off as human, and it does not write that signature: the system adds it.

The mention is the instruction. Whatever the message asks for is what it does: review a piece of content, summarize the recent discussion, answer a question, record progress on a task, write a draft. There is no single request format.

The group policy defines who can trigger it and what happens to the reply. It is per group, and it overrides the general policy in Governance:

With nothing chosen, the group inherits the general policy. And CRM capture only reaches people who are already contacts of the organization: someone not in the CRM never enters it because of a group. Without a subscription, 🟢 records only presence, like 🟡.

The role in the group. Each authorized group can have a role of its own — free text that frames its behavior there: "Customer support: answer product questions in a formal tone; never discuss pricing — refer to the boss." With no role set, it acts as content manager, the default. The role sets tone and boundaries; the message that mentions it is still the instruction.

Who asked matters — and so does the group's category. If the mention came from you, it executes in full, and in an internal work group that includes managing work plans, deliverables and tasks in Y Managers, right from there. In a regular or an external work group the plan is out of reach even for you — reads, edits and progress notes alike: asking "how is the deliverables plan going?" in a client group would read the internal plan out loud in front of the client, and that is exactly the opposite of what that group's notice promises. If it came from another member, it helps within that group's scope of work and does not act outside the group at a third party's request: a group turn does not reach your inbox, your calendar or your other conversations. And your personal memory is not there to be exposed — since August 15, 2026 the tools that read and write what you told it to remember, and your Audio to Notes notes, do not enter a group turn — in no group, declared or not, and even when the one mentioning it is you. It is not an instruction it could disobey: the tool does not exist there. It holds both ways — nobody reads your personal memory from a group, and nobody plants a "fact" about you there that Orion would later repeat in your direct conversation. The same removal reaches any worker on your team triggered from there: ticking "Memory" in its skills does not open that door. Anyone in the group can ask for you — "escalate this to João", using your name — and it takes the request and logs it.

Worth restating the reach: in a group turn Orion works with a reduced set of tools — AI team, internet research, consulting the library (always at that group's knowledge level, as in the table above), reading this manual and a scratchpad for that conversation —, and that set varies with the category. The work plan tools only come in when you are the one mentioning it in an internal work group. Filing to the library is only offered to it when someone there can actually file: in a regular group it does not appear, and in an external group only when the request is yours. It does not open your inbox or your calendar from a group.

Delegating is not a shortcut past the knowledge level. If that group's turn only sees public knowledge — a regular or an external work group —, the worker triggered from there inherits the same ceiling: it consults the library at the public level, exactly as Orion would there, and it deposits nothing into the internal archive — except the filing that, in an external work group, only you can ask for. Without that, "@orion, have Marketing look into this" inside a client group would be the detour that put the internal archive back in the room. It holds since August 15, 2026. Outside those two cases nothing changes: in a delegation from your direct conversation or from an internal work group, the worker works with the organization's knowledge, as always.

Images and documents. In an authorized group, posted images and documents are processed and stay available for review for 48 hours — including when the mention comes after the post ("@orion review these"). It analyzes at most 8 media files at a time; if there are more, it says in the first line of the reply how many were posted, how many it analyzed and how to bring in the rest. A partial analysis that does not declare itself partial is the worst possible outcome. To review one specific piece, reply to (quote) it mentioning @orion: only that item goes into the analysis, and it says how many others were deliberately left out. Videos and stickers it cannot see, and it says so instead of describing them. If media were left out, ask "@orion, analyze the previous ones": it brings the next batch, once — for anything older than that, reply to (quote) each one mentioning @orion.

What gets stored. This is the deal you need to take to the members of the group before authorizing:

• Text: every text message in the authorized group is logged for 72 hours, with the name and phone number of whoever wrote it. After that they are deleted. That log is what makes it possible to answer "what are people discussing here?". When reading it, Orion brings up to the 60 most recent messages of that log (25 unless someone asks for more) and says how many it read; audio, video, stickers and photos or files without a caption never go into it. Inside a group, Orion reads only the log of that group — never another group's, whether on WhatsApp or Telegram — and so does a worker triggered from there. Reading the log of all your authorized groups together only happens in your direct conversation with Orion and with the workers you gave that tool to (triggered by you or by their own routines).
• Media: images and documents stay for 48 hours.
• Unauthorized groups: Orion does not reply and none of the content is logged — unless that group has a work category, internal or external, which is a separate decision, explained above. Taking part and capturing are separate choices.
• Authorized but Regular group: the 72 hours and the 48 hours above apply, and nothing beyond that — no work capture, public knowledge only in the answers, and nothing that can be filed into the library from there.

The screen suggests it, and it is worth doing: after authorizing, ask "@orion, introduce yourself" in the group. It explains who it is, what it does there and how to call it.

A guard against empty promises. If its reply claims it saved, adjusted or recorded something when no write tool actually ran, the system tries again — and, if the claim persists with no write, it attaches the warning: "Nothing was written to the system in this action — the text above is a proposal, not a saved change."

Revoke takes Orion out of the group: it stops participating, the 72-hour log stops and media stop being stored. What revoking does not do is stop the work capture. If the group is marked internal or external, the content keeps being captured with Orion silent in the room — the two switches are unwound separately: revoke the participation on one, set the category back to Regular on the other.