Your character, its own Telegram bot

Most people meet a character inside someone else's bot. This is the other thing you can do with one: give it an address of its own, so people open a chat with your character rather than with a menu that happens to contain it.

Create a character in the main bot. Catalogue and link publication both require AI review followed by manual moderation. Only approved published characters can power a separate bot.

What “your own bot” actually means

There is no @BotFather in this, and no token for you to copy. Talaforge creates the bot for you through Telegram's own bot-management mechanism — the newest part of the platform, where a bot may create bots. You tap «Create my bot», Telegram opens its own creation sheet with an @username already suggested, you keep it or type another, and Telegram tells you on the spot whether it is free. That sheet is the only screen outside Talaforge in the whole process.

On confirm the new bot is handed straight to us. The key never travels through a chat message, which is the part that used to go wrong: the old ritual — open @BotFather, run a command, copy a live credential, paste it into a conversation — is exactly what this replaces. We can also rotate that key later without asking you for anything.

The ownership is unchanged by any of it: Telegram registers the @username to YOUR account, and the bot sits in your Telegram bot list like any other bot you own. If you ever want it back or gone, Telegram is where you do that — revoking the key stops your character answering there, and deleting the bot frees the @username for good.

From a character to a live bot

After approval: main bot → Profile → My bots → choose your character. Telegram creates your bot. Set the payer and tips under Billing.

Then Talaforge dresses the bot as that character, with nothing for you to fill in:

• Its name is the character's name.
• Its profile picture is the character's avatar.
• The «What can this bot do?» screen — the one Telegram shows BEFORE a stranger ever presses Start — is written from the character's description.
• The first message a stranger receives on /start is the character's own greeting, sent without spending any energy at all — no model call, no charge.
• A menu button, so the bot does not open with the blank command list Telegram gives a new bot.

There is no code, no server, no deployment. Nothing runs on a machine you have to keep alive.

Who is allowed to write to it

You choose. A bot can be open to anyone who finds it, or it can answer only you.

Both are real uses. An open bot is something you share — a character other people talk to. A closed one is a private line to your own character with an address you can reach from any device without opening a menu first.

What the bot inherits

The character behind the bot stays a character. It does not become a frozen copy:

• Editable and swappable — change the personality, or point the bot at a different character entirely, and the @username stays the same.
• Memory works the same way it does anywhere else: per character, per topic, per person talking to it.
• Pictures and voice replies come with it, on the same defaults.
• The model choice comes with it, and switching mid-conversation still works.
• Rich formatting is on by default in a bot of your own — headings, tables, quotes, spoilers and formulas arrive rendered, which is what a character who teaches something actually needs.

In other words, you are not building a separate product. You are giving one of your characters a front door.

Everything it does, from one card

The bot is run from Profile → 🤖 My bots in Talaforge, and the card for it holds the whole surface:

• Stop it or start it again, at any time.
• Swap the character behind it, or point it at a different one.
• Open it to everyone, or close it to everyone but you.
• Let it answer in groups — and choose whether it speaks only when addressed.
• Let it write the first comment under new posts in a channel's discussion group.
• Let it occasionally join a group conversation on its own, rarely and on topic.
• Photos and voice on or off, and the adult-photos switch for its own chats.
• Your cut of top-ups made inside it.
• Check the connection and have a fresh key issued if Telegram ever stops accepting the old one.
• Reset its look back to the character, if you changed the name or picture in Telegram and want ours back.
• Top up the energy it answers on.

The one thing that is not on this card is deleting the bot for good and freeing its @username. That is Telegram's to do, it is yours to decide, and it cannot be undone.

How you earn from it

Your cut is a tip added ON TOP of the pack price, and it is paid to you by Telegram rather than by us. When a guest tops up energy inside your bot, Telegram asks them for two payments: your share, which goes to your own bot in Telegram Stars, and the pack itself.

That is worth being precise about, because it is unusual: the Stars land in the Stars balance of the bot that is registered to you. There is no payout we schedule, no threshold to reach and no account of ours your money passes through.

You set the percentage yourself, on the bot's card — up to a ceiling, and all the way down to nothing. At nothing, a top-up inside your bot costs your guests LESS than the same pack in the main bot, which is a real thing to do with a bot you run for a community rather than for income.

Where the bot can go next

Once a character has its own bot, three other things become possible, and each of them is the same bot doing a different job.

👥 Manage your bot's groups in the main bot → Profile → My bots. The owner chooses where their own energy can be spent; ordinary callers can pay for themselves. Replies and addressed commands work with privacy mode; admin rights let it see the whole chat. Only owner-funded replies require your approval for this group. Ordinary human callers can use their own energy without it. Promo, first comments and anonymous replies require approval.

Not to start. Telegram's rule is about Group Privacy, not about being an administrator: with privacy on — the default for a new bot — the bot receives commands aimed at it and replies to its own messages, so the character can already answer anyone who replies to it. Switching Group Privacy off in @BotFather, or making the bot an admin, hands it every message in the room, which is what @mentions and calling it by name need. Either route works. Our own default is that the character speaks only when it is addressed.

It can answer your own incoming direct messages through Telegram Business, in the character's voice, while you are away. You choose which chats it covers in Telegram's own settings, and the moment you reply yourself, your reply wins.

And it can open and answer the comment thread under a new post on your channel.