Clever idea! Although after reading it briefly I see a need for secrets storage.
I've made one Telegram bot hosted on VPS with Docker and cloud LLM. It also interacts with a few other outside services and all credentials are injected via env vars now.
Should I push them as `.env` file for Telegram serverless?
> Each invocation runs in a lightweight V8 isolate, close to Telegram's own systems, so calls to the Bot API and your database are quick and reliable.
Telegram’s servers are distributed worldwide. I understand that the calls to the Bot API may be quick because the serverless code would be propagated to the edge, but how does it handle an SQLite DB? Is that also replicated to guarantee quick access from anywhere?
Telegram's servers are far from "distributed worldwide": In fact, it currently has only 5 logical "data center"s, and while DC3 is still on, clues [0] seem to suggest DC3 doesn't actually carry user data at all now, and both DC2 and 4 are in Amsterdam, so essentially they just need to serve 3 locations.
Also, Telegram's protocol design only allows for connecting to user's home DC for any write interactions (except media, which in most cases still is home DC, or a "media DC" alongside the home DC). Bots are based on the same DC of the user, so almost all meaningful interactions will happen only on one DC for any specific bot.
My first guess would be replicaton isn't that critical, because a user would mostly interact with an instance that's nearby, and this instance has their data. But the page mentions:
> Games and Tools — including leaderboards, quizzes and more.
A leaderboard that's globally consistent, huh, that's not trivial.
Maybe they just propagate the SQL commands to all their servers...
Good lord. This reeks of LLM... why should I use your product when you can't be bothered to have a human write it? Why should I trust it to work correctly or have been decently tested, neither of which is a given when having an AI vibe-code it?
And why is it one huge single page of word salad instead of self-contained units?
Anyway, good to see someone post a fully self contained example demonstrating core concepts. At least one thing done right.
This is off-topic, but I was kind of surprised to see this page written by Claude. I guess I shouldn't really be surprised, but I somehow didn't expect it.
Have you ever “wired” anything to anything else when developing software? No, because software doesn’t involve wires, but LLMs are quite convinced that it does.
"it doesn't silently go unnoticed", "would be silently inert", "instead of silently overwriting", "you can never silently overwrite"
The biggest tell for me is overuse of the term "silently". "quietly" is another one you often see from Claude in particular. Models love adverbs for whatever reason, whereas a human writer would use them in moderation for emphasis or prefer terms like "by accident".
Accidental things and silent things are very different. Accidental means you didn't mean to do it, silent means you don't know you've done it (or might not if you want to get picky, you could notice).
I often see replies to AI-generated posts being pointed out here asking what makes it obvious. Is it that difficult to notice the indicators? Is it mostly undetected by English-as-a-second-language speakers, people inexperienced with generative AI, or is it something else?
I can't quite tell you, it wasn't something specific, Claude's writing is just a specific sort of punchy. The "directly on X - no Y, no Z, no A" and the "this is the part you no longer have to do" just smell a lot like Claude. Also "removes that layer entirely", "they map cleanly onto each other", it's all just Claude.
It's how you see a painting and you know it's by Picasso, let's say, or you read an author and you know it's Hemingway. Everyone has their own unique style, and so does Claude. It's just that Claude is the most prolific writer in human history now.
It's been a core feature of Telegram since almost the beginning, and one of the main reasons I end up using Telegram, not sure why you'd think this is a drawback. The spam sucks though, not sure how they haven't got a handle on it yet.
Clever idea! Although after reading it briefly I see a need for secrets storage.
I've made one Telegram bot hosted on VPS with Docker and cloud LLM. It also interacts with a few other outside services and all credentials are injected via env vars now.
Should I push them as `.env` file for Telegram serverless?
This is cool. I wish Signal had a bot API like telegram's.
I wish WhatsApp did... hopefully it goes the way of BBM and a more developer friendly platform becomes the norm among normies.
What are the quotas like execution time, storage etc?
Thinking about using this to run my Plex server
Emphasis mine:
> Each invocation runs in a lightweight V8 isolate, close to Telegram's own systems, so calls to the Bot API and your database are quick and reliable.
Telegram’s servers are distributed worldwide. I understand that the calls to the Bot API may be quick because the serverless code would be propagated to the edge, but how does it handle an SQLite DB? Is that also replicated to guarantee quick access from anywhere?
Telegram's servers are far from "distributed worldwide": In fact, it currently has only 5 logical "data center"s, and while DC3 is still on, clues [0] seem to suggest DC3 doesn't actually carry user data at all now, and both DC2 and 4 are in Amsterdam, so essentially they just need to serve 3 locations.
Also, Telegram's protocol design only allows for connecting to user's home DC for any write interactions (except media, which in most cases still is home DC, or a "media DC" alongside the home DC). Bots are based on the same DC of the user, so almost all meaningful interactions will happen only on one DC for any specific bot.
[0]: https://dev.moe/en/3025
My first guess would be replicaton isn't that critical, because a user would mostly interact with an instance that's nearby, and this instance has their data. But the page mentions:
> Games and Tools — including leaderboards, quizzes and more.
A leaderboard that's globally consistent, huh, that's not trivial.
Maybe they just propagate the SQL commands to all their servers...
I guess the v8 isolate is heavily restricted and sandboxed and can't be used to access the local filesystem
With the popularity of Hermes, OpenClaw, etc, BotFather is quite a linchpin in the AI ecosystem.
I don't see anything about pricing.
The lack of a clear business model does make me hesitate in building anything substantial on it.
Supposedly Telegram has been profitable since 2024 but there's crypto stuff mixed in there so it's hard to know how stable that is.
free so far.
I'm also curious about this.
sounds free to me
A few questions and if someone knows please help:
1) storage limits? 2) can access the internet? If so: bandwidth limits?
Thanks!
Providing a SQLite db out of the box is a nice touch. I wonder if they're capping it's size in any way.
We're never getting away from Javascript, are we
Good lord. This reeks of LLM... why should I use your product when you can't be bothered to have a human write it? Why should I trust it to work correctly or have been decently tested, neither of which is a given when having an AI vibe-code it?
And why is it one huge single page of word salad instead of self-contained units?
Anyway, good to see someone post a fully self contained example demonstrating core concepts. At least one thing done right.
Sounds like it's free, so, why the hate? May as well have zero docs. I don't think they're trying to convince you of anything.
> Sounds like it's free, so, why the hate?
I see undisclosed usage of AI as a theft of my time.
This is off-topic, but I was kind of surprised to see this page written by Claude. I guess I shouldn't really be surprised, but I somehow didn't expect it.
Out of curiosity - how did you figure this out? I cannot find any hints about that. Was it the language used?
language, structure. look how much negation there is. the construction "no A, no B, no, C" is used several times.
or another example, the following sentence:
"handlers/ is flat — no subdirectories"
who writes like this? you'd just write "handlers/ is a flat folder" or similar.
Have you ever “wired” anything to anything else when developing software? No, because software doesn’t involve wires, but LLMs are quite convinced that it does.
"it doesn't silently go unnoticed", "would be silently inert", "instead of silently overwriting", "you can never silently overwrite"
The biggest tell for me is overuse of the term "silently". "quietly" is another one you often see from Claude in particular. Models love adverbs for whatever reason, whereas a human writer would use them in moderation for emphasis or prefer terms like "by accident".
Accidental things and silent things are very different. Accidental means you didn't mean to do it, silent means you don't know you've done it (or might not if you want to get picky, you could notice).
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Signs_of_AI_writing
I often see replies to AI-generated posts being pointed out here asking what makes it obvious. Is it that difficult to notice the indicators? Is it mostly undetected by English-as-a-second-language speakers, people inexperienced with generative AI, or is it something else?
I rather think the surprise is a result of technical users wildly overestimating how obvious these markers are to people.
I can't quite tell you, it wasn't something specific, Claude's writing is just a specific sort of punchy. The "directly on X - no Y, no Z, no A" and the "this is the part you no longer have to do" just smell a lot like Claude. Also "removes that layer entirely", "they map cleanly onto each other", it's all just Claude.
It's how you see a painting and you know it's by Picasso, let's say, or you read an author and you know it's Hemingway. Everyone has their own unique style, and so does Claude. It's just that Claude is the most prolific writer in human history now.
Possibly the excessive use of em dashes. Just a guess.
This is so obvious
The most AI generated MD in existence. It's also th excessive use of bold, only AI can make bold hard to read.
Reply to the parent, not me. I understand this.
I finds it surprising you find it surprising.
Is this the best use of a human, to write a long, detailed manual for a feature? Which most likely will be read by another LLM?
telegram is full of bots and spam.
before it was a better WhatsApp alternative. now either WhatsApp or Signal.
those bots are different to these ones, for these you have to start the interaction. bots is the most useful feature of telegram
> telegram is full of bots
It's been a core feature of Telegram since almost the beginning, and one of the main reasons I end up using Telegram, not sure why you'd think this is a drawback. The spam sucks though, not sure how they haven't got a handle on it yet.
If you don’t join spammy groups you won’t get spam
Fair, I am a part of a bunch of groups I no longer care about that the spam might originate from. Thanks :)
They should start charging for it. Like not a lot, maybe just a coffee a month. That should keep the bots away.
I use Telegram only for groups with people I know. I've got zero issues with boths.
Are you using public channels? (are those even a thing with Telegram?)
> are those even a thing with Telegram?
It is the thing with Telegram