Turn your Telegram into an AI Agent with ActivePieces

In the past, I've shared insights about Activepieces, a remarkably powerful and often underestimated automation platform. It offers many capabilities similar to what n8n provides, but with a significant advantage: native support for AI agents, MCP servers, and much more. The beauty of Activepieces lies in its open-source nature and a fully free cloud plan – a feature not available with n8n's cloud service.

In this blog post, I'll guide you through building an automated workflow that integrates any AI model, like OpenAI or Gemini, directly into your Telegram account. This setup empowers you to bring all the capabilities of AI agents—including document tools, email integration, and more—to a new virtual user in Telegram (often called a "Telegram bot"). You'll be able to chat with this bot anytime, and it can even initiate conversations with you if you choose.

What You'll Be Able to Do

By the end of this guide, you will have a Telegram AI assistant that can:

• Interact with you just like a chatbot, similar to ChatGPT.
• Integrate powerful tools such as email, document access, news updates, and thousands of other services you use daily.
• Answer your questions instantly, all within the Telegram app.
• Supports multi-user conversations. Each conversation is saved in a separate session, allowing you to share your bot with others.
• Optionally, provide a proactive "good morning" briefing directly in your chat.

And if you prefer n8n for any reason, most of the steps outlined in this post can still be applied to other workflows that support Telegram integration.