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Doug Daniels c6d2f45f93 feat: add Signal channel adapter

Native Signal adapter using signal-cli TCP JSON-RPC daemon. No Chat SDK
bridge or npm dependencies — uses only Node.js builtins.

Features:
- DM and group message support
- Voice message detection (placeholder text; transcription via
  /add-voice-transcription skill)
- Typing indicators (DMs only)
- Mention detection via text match
- Managed daemon lifecycle (auto-start/stop signal-cli)
- Echo suppression for outbound messages

Also fixes init-first-agent.ts to skip channel-prefixing for phone
numbers (+...) and Signal group IDs (group:...), which are native
platform IDs that adapters send without a channel prefix.

Install via /add-signal skill. Uses /init-first-agent for channel wiring.

Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 4.6 (1M context) <noreply@anthropic.com>

2026-04-23 15:15:42 -04:00

3.4 KiB

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name, description

name	description
add-signal	Add Signal channel integration via signal-cli TCP daemon. Native adapter — no Chat SDK bridge.

Add Signal Channel

Adds Signal messaging support via a native adapter that communicates with a signal-cli TCP daemon using JSON-RPC.

Prerequisites

signal-cli installed and a Signal account linked
- macOS: brew install signal-cli
- Linux: download from GitHub releases
- Link your account: signal-cli -a +1YOURNUMBER link (follow the QR instructions)

Install

Pre-flight (idempotent)

Skip to Credentials if all of these are already in place:

src/channels/signal.ts exists
src/channels/signal.test.ts exists
src/channels/index.ts contains import './signal.js';

Otherwise continue. Every step below is safe to re-run.

1. Fetch the skill branch

git fetch origin skill/signal

2. Copy the adapter and tests

git show origin/skill/signal:src/channels/signal.ts > src/channels/signal.ts
git show origin/skill/signal:src/channels/signal.test.ts > src/channels/signal.test.ts

3. Append the self-registration import

Append to src/channels/index.ts (skip if the line is already present):

import './signal.js';

4. Build

pnpm run build

No npm packages to install — the adapter uses only Node.js builtins (node:net, node:child_process, node:fs).

Credentials

Add to .env:

SIGNAL_ACCOUNT=+1YOURNUMBER

Optional settings

# TCP daemon host and port (default: 127.0.0.1:7583)
SIGNAL_HTTP_HOST=127.0.0.1
SIGNAL_HTTP_PORT=7583

# Whether NanoClaw manages the daemon lifecycle (default: true)
# Set to false if you run signal-cli daemon externally
SIGNAL_MANAGE_DAEMON=true

# signal-cli data directory (default: ~/.local/share/signal-cli)
SIGNAL_DATA_DIR=~/.local/share/signal-cli

Sync to container

mkdir -p data/env && cp .env data/env/env

Restart

# macOS
launchctl kickstart -k gui/$(id -u)/com.nanoclaw

# Linux
systemctl --user restart nanoclaw

Next Steps

Run /init-first-agent to create an agent and wire it to your Signal DM. Signal is direct-addressable — your phone number is the platform ID:

User ID: your Signal phone number (e.g. +15551234567)
Platform ID: same as user ID for DMs (e.g. +15551234567)
For group chats: use group:<groupId> — find group IDs via signal-cli -a +1YOURNUMBER listGroups

/init-first-agent handles user creation, owner role, agent group, messaging group wiring, and the welcome DM. It's idempotent — safe to run again for additional agents.

Channel Info

Field	Value
Type	`signal`
Thread support	No (Signal has no thread model)
Platform ID format	DM: `+15555550123` / Group: `group:<groupId>`
Mention detection	Text-match against agent group name (no SDK-level mentions)
Typing indicators	DMs only
Typical use	Personal assistant via Signal DMs or small group chats
Isolation	Recommended: one agent per Signal account

Voice Messages

Voice attachments are detected but not transcribed by default. The agent receives [Voice Message] as the message text. Run /add-voice-transcription to enable automatic local transcription via parakeet-mlx.

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