Telegram AI Chatbot (shayan_your_friendly_bot)

A powerful, beginner-friendly Telegram AI Chatbot built with Node.js, the Telegraf framework, and dual AI engine support: Groq API (Llama 3.3) and Google Gemini API (gemini-2.0-flash-lite).

The bot acts as a warm, friendly conversational assistant. It can chat, answer questions, explain code, write stories, and translate languages, and it understands almost every global language.

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Features

• Dual AI Engine Support:
  • Groq Llama 3.3 (Primary): Extremely fast, intelligent, and comes with a massive free tier of 14,400 messages per day!
  • Google Gemini (Secondary Fallback): Auto-falls back to Gemini if Groq encounters issues or rate limits.
• Multilingual Support: Converses fluently in Hindi, Urdu, English, Spanish, Arabic, and dozens of other languages.
• Warm & Friendly Persona: Customized system prompts instruct the AI to behave as a friendly companion.
• Robust Redundancy: If both AI keys are missing, the bot falls back gracefully to a friendly static echo bot instead of crashing.
• Production Webhook Mode: Automatically switches to Webhook mode when hosted on Render (using RENDER_EXTERNAL_URL) to wake the server up when a message is received, solving the free-tier sleep issue.
• Graceful Shutdown: Cleans up and stops polling gracefully on process termination signals (SIGINT, SIGTERM).

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Prerequisites

• Node.js (v18 or higher recommended)
• NPM (Node Package Manager)

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Setup & Installation

1. Clone or copy files

Ensure you have the following files in your workspace directory:

• package.json
• index.js
• .env
• .gitignore

2. Install dependencies

Run the following command to install the required packages:

npm install

3. Get a Telegram Bot Token

1. Open Telegram and search for @BotFather (the official bot with the blue verified badge).
2. Start a conversation and send the /newbot command.
3. Follow the instructions to choose a name (e.g., shayan_your_friendly_bot) and a unique username ending in bot.
4. Copy the HTTP API token provided by BotFather.

4. Get a Groq API Key (Recommended - 14,400 messages/day)

1. Go to console.groq.com.
2. Sign up with your Google account or email (completely free).
3. Click on API Keys in the left menu, then click Create API Key.
4. Copy the key starting with gsk_.

5. Get a Google Gemini API Key (Optional Fallback)

1. Go to Google AI Studio.
2. Click on the Create API key button.
3. Copy the generated API key starting with AIzaSy.

6. Configure Environment Variables

Open the .env file in the root of the project and populate your keys:

BOT_TOKEN=your_telegram_bot_token_here
GEMINI_API_KEY=your_gemini_api_key_here
GROQ_API_KEY=your_groq_api_key_here

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Running the Bot

Development Mode (with auto-reload)

To run the bot in development mode where it auto-restarts on any file change:

npm run dev

Production Mode / Hosting

To run the bot in production mode:

npm start

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Deploying to Render (24/7 Hosting)

1. Push your code to your GitHub repository.
2. Log in to Render using your GitHub account.
3. Click New + -> Web Service.
4. Connect your repository.
5. Configure the service:
   • Name: shayan-friendly-bot
   • Runtime: Node
   • Build Command: npm install
   • Start Command: npm start
   • Instance Type: Free
6. Click Environment Variables and add the following keys:
   • BOT_TOKEN
   • GROQ_API_KEY
   • GEMINI_API_KEY
7. Click Deploy Web Service.