Umbrella Channels

An umbrella channel is a public Telegram channel where Krabli automatically publishes translated copies of everything you publish to your Main channel. When you approve a post in Backstage and tap Publish, it goes to your Main channel — and a translated version of it goes to every umbrella channel you've set up.

This lets you reach audiences in multiple languages without any extra review work.

Prerequisites

Before you can add an umbrella channel, all four of these must be in place:

The Umbrella channels page shows you exactly which items are missing and links directly to where you can add them.

About AI costs
Each post you publish triggers one AI translation call per umbrella language. These are billed to your OpenRouter account at the model's published rates. A typical short post costs a fraction of a cent. The channel card shows an estimate so you're never surprised.

Adding a language channel

1. Open the Umbrella channels page from the menu.
2. Tap Add language.
3. Fill in three fields:
   • Language to translate into — choose from the offered languages. Your workspace language (the language agents write in) is excluded — translating into the same language you write in would be redundant.
   • Public link name — the @username for the new channel. Must be 5–32 characters: letters, digits, and underscores; must start with a letter. Check that it's not already taken.
   • Channel name — the title displayed to subscribers.
4. Before you confirm, the page explains in plain language exactly what Krabli is about to do with your linked account.
5. Tap Make it for me.

What Krabli does

Krabli uses your linked Telegram account to:

1. Check that the public link name is available
2. Create a new Telegram channel (private at first)
3. Set the public username
4. Add your bot as an administrator with post messages rights only
5. Register the channel and start translating — from now, not retroactively

If anything goes wrong along the way (name was taken in the time between the check and the creation, account's channel limit reached, etc.), Krabli tells you in plain language and cleans up any incomplete work. No half-done channels are left behind.

Translation behavior

• Posts are translated as they're published. There is no way to translate past posts retroactively.
• The source language for translation is your workspace language (set on the Agents page). Krabli translates from that language into each umbrella channel's language.
• A footnote at the bottom of each post identifies it as a translation and names the source.
• If a post and an umbrella channel share the same language, that channel is skipped for that post (no translation needed).

Pausing and resuming a language

On the Umbrella channels page, each language shows a Pause button. Pausing stops translations for that channel — new posts will not be translated into it — but the channel itself stays in Telegram and keeps its existing posts.

Tap Resume to restart translations. Only posts published after you resume will be translated.

Removing a language

Tap Remove next to a language channel and confirm by typing the language code. Krabli stops translating into that channel immediately.

The Telegram channel is not deleted. Krabli only stops sending to it. The channel stays in Telegram with all its existing posts, and its subscribers still see it. If you want to delete the channel itself, do that in Telegram after removing it from Krabli.

After removal, that language becomes available to add again.

Channel health

Each umbrella channel shows a status:

• Translating — everything is working
• Paused — you paused it manually
• Needs attention — Krabli can't post to the channel (bot lost admin rights, channel was deleted, etc.). The page shows the specific problem. Fix the channel rights, then tap Check to resume.

Limits

You can have one umbrella channel per language. The number of languages available is the number of offered languages minus your workspace language. There's no separate umbrella channel limit — the limit is the number of languages.