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Discussion Sentiment

73% Positive

Analyzed from 1015 words in the discussion.

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#telegram#claude#bots#why#bot#should#whatsapp#don#free#anything

Discussion (45 Comments)Read Original on HackerNews

imhoguyabout 1 hour ago
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?

domhabout 2 hours ago
This is cool. I wish Signal had a bot API like telegram's.
AgharaShyamabout 1 hour ago
I wish WhatsApp did... hopefully it goes the way of BBM and a more developer friendly platform becomes the norm among normies.
domh5 minutes ago
WhatsApp does appear to have some "business" account/API type stuff which I assume is scriptable. But I don't believe it's got a free tier for personal use (although I haven't personally looked).

It is always preferable to use WhatsApp to contact a business than calling up.

eamagabout 2 hours ago
What are the quotas like execution time, storage etc?
xd1936about 1 hour ago
Thinking about using this to run my Plex server
AnonCabout 2 hours ago
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?

laosbabout 1 hour ago
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

netsharcabout 1 hour ago
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...

weliabout 1 hour ago
I guess the v8 isolate is heavily restricted and sandboxed and can't be used to access the local filesystem
bdcravensabout 1 hour ago
With the popularity of Hermes, OpenClaw, etc, BotFather is quite a linchpin in the AI ecosystem.
victorbjorklundabout 2 hours ago
I don't see anything about pricing.
simonwabout 1 hour ago
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.

catapartabout 2 hours ago
I'm also curious about this.
sam_lowry_43 minutes ago
free so far.
dist-epochabout 1 hour ago
sounds free to me
raybbabout 2 hours ago
Providing a SQLite db out of the box is a nice touch. I wonder if they're capping it's size in any way.
nunobritoabout 1 hour ago
A few questions and if someone knows please help:

1) storage limits? 2) can access the internet? If so: bandwidth limits?

Thanks!

honeycrispyabout 1 hour ago
We're never getting away from Javascript, are we
cube0026 minutes ago
Certainly not now Claude Code is normalizing using not only JavaScript but also React for a CLI application.
mschuster91about 1 hour ago
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.

adlpzabout 1 hour ago
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.
mschuster9144 minutes ago
> Sounds like it's free, so, why the hate?

I see undisclosed usage of AI as a theft of my time.

stavrosabout 2 hours ago
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.
joreabout 2 hours ago
Out of curiosity - how did you figure this out? I cannot find any hints about that. Was it the language used?
zackkridaabout 2 hours ago
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.

usuiabout 2 hours ago
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?
vidarhabout 1 hour ago
I rather think the surprise is a result of technical users wildly overestimating how obvious these markers are to people.
petercooperabout 2 hours ago
"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".

IanCal42 minutes ago
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).
doolsabout 1 hour ago
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.
stavrosabout 1 hour ago
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.

fakeBeerDrinkerabout 2 hours ago
Possibly the excessive use of em dashes. Just a guess.
mohammedmsgmabout 2 hours ago
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.

dist-epochabout 1 hour ago
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?

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dzongaabout 2 hours ago
telegram is full of bots and spam.

before it was a better WhatsApp alternative. now either WhatsApp or Signal.

kelvinjps10about 2 hours ago
those bots are different to these ones, for these you have to start the interaction. bots is the most useful feature of telegram
embedding-shapeabout 1 hour ago
> 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.

vachinaabout 1 hour ago
If you don’t join spammy groups you won’t get spam
embedding-shapeabout 1 hour ago
Fair, I am a part of a bunch of groups I no longer care about that the spam might originate from. Thanks :)
sgtabout 2 hours ago
They should start charging for it. Like not a lot, maybe just a coffee a month. That should keep the bots away.
TacticalCoderabout 2 hours ago
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?)

flexagoonabout 1 hour ago
> are those even a thing with Telegram?

It is the thing with Telegram