Telegram Serverless: Build Bots Without Managing Servers or Containers
I introduce Telegram Serverless, a new platform letting you run bot backend code directly on Telegram's infrastructure. You write plain JavaScript modules and deploy them with a single command, eliminating the need to provision servers, manage containers, or handle scaling. With built-in access to the Bot API and a persistent database, you can focus entirely on building features while the platform handles the rest.
If you have ever wired a bot to a VPS, a cloud function, or a hosting panel just to answer a /start, this is the part you no longer have to do.
- domh
This is cool. I wish Signal had a bot API like telegram's.
- eamag
What are the quotas like execution time, storage etc?
- zb3
I thought this was about P2P messaging (without servers, hence server "less"), but no, obviously "serverless" on HN has to mean "run code on someone else's servers"..
- kreco
The title made me realized that there is less and less use of the "serverless".
Which was one of the most non-sensical word to say "You don't maintain the server".
- imhoguy
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?
- raybb
Providing a SQLite db out of the box is a nice touch. I wonder if they're capping it's size in any way.
- honeycrispy
We're never getting away from Javascript, are we
- AnonC
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?