What a bot can do

  • Booking a service: choosing a date and time, confirmation and a reminder the day before.
  • Answering common questions and handing tricky ones over to a person.
  • Taking requests, saving them to a spreadsheet and notifying the owner.
  • Scheduled broadcasts and reminders.
  • Collecting data from websites — for example, prices or new listings — and sending a summary.
  • A Telegram mini app: a full interface with buttons and forms inside the messenger.

Step 1. Create a bot in BotFather

  1. In Telegram, open the official @BotFather bot and send the /newbot command.
  2. Choose a name and a username for the bot — the username must end in “bot.”
  3. BotFather will send you a token — a long string like 123456:ABC…. It’s the key to your bot: don’t publish it or show it to anyone.

It’s best to put the token in a .env file in the project folder (as the line BOT_TOKEN=…) and tell the agent where it is. That way the token stays out of the code and the chat.

Step 2. Describe the scenario

Describe what the bot does from the customer’s point of view: what they type, what they see in reply, what happens next. For example:

Make a Telegram bot for booking at a barbershop. The client taps /start, picks a service (haircut, beard, combo — prices in prices.txt), a date within the next 14 days and a free time slot between 10 am and 9 pm. After booking, the bot sends a confirmation, and a reminder 2 hours before. As the owner, I get a message about every new booking. The token is in .env.

Step 3. Launch and test

The agent writes the code, installs the libraries it needs and launches the bot in the built-in terminal — you see every command and its output. Open the bot in Telegram and go through the scenario as a customer. If something’s off, describe what you did and what you saw: the agent will find the cause in the logs and fix it.

Step 4. Mini app (optional)

If buttons in the chat aren’t enough, ask for a Telegram mini app: a catalog, a cart or a booking form with a calendar. In NEO’s App section you can open it in Telegram mode — with launch parameters and the messenger’s theme — and test it without leaving NEO.

Step 5. Keeping the bot running 24/7

While the bot runs on your computer, it only works when the computer is on. To run it 24/7, it has to be hosted on a server: the agent will suggest options and prepare everything for launch. NEO plans include their own hosting: on Pro one project runs around the clock, on Max three.

Security

  • The token is like a password. If it leaks, revoke it in @BotFather with the /revoke command and issue a new one.
  • Collect only the customer data you need and tell people why.
  • Before launching for everyone, go through the whole scenario yourself — including mistakes: a wrong date, a double tap, a cancellation.