Use this any time you want a Telegram bot as the front end for an automation, no app to build, no server to stand up just to receive messages.
Steps
- Open Telegram, search for @BotFather (has a verified blue checkmark).
- Send
/newbot. - Choose a display name (can be anything, changeable later).
- Choose a username, must end in
bot(e.g.myproject_bot), can't be changed later without recreating the bot. - BotFather replies with a message containing your bot token, a string like
123456789:AAExxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx. Save it somewhere safe. - Send your new bot any message (e.g. "hi") from your own account, this opens a chat with it, which you'll need later to find your chat ID.
Gotcha
The bot token never expires on its own, it only changes if you explicitly send /revoke to BotFather. If you're reusing a bot from months ago, there's no need to regenerate anything, the old token still works.
Quick reference
To find your chat ID later (needed for sending messages back to yourself from an automation): trigger any workflow that logs the incoming Telegram payload, and look for message.chat.id in the JSON. For a private chat with the bot, this is usually the same number as your Telegram user ID.