The Action Node: Everything Your Bot Can Do

A message node talks to the person. An action node does the work behind it: it saves an answer, fetches data from another service, tags the contact, waits, or starts a follow-up. Most of the time nothing appears in the chat at all — the flow simply moves on to the next node.

A few actions do send something, and it is worth knowing which. Notify by Tag messages other people, Service Notification pings your team, Emoji Captcha posts a challenge to the user, Launch Mini App posts a button, and Launch Broadcast (only inside Operations) sends a broadcast to many people. The rest work quietly in the background.

On the canvas an action node has two outputs: Next and Failure. If an action fails — another service is down, your code hits an error — the flow can carry on down the Failure path instead of stopping dead.

Click the round + button in the bottom-right corner of the canvas. The Add palette opens with every node kind you can create — pick Action.

You can also drag a connection out of an existing node and drop it on empty canvas. The same palette opens, and the node you choose arrives already connected.

Click the node to open its editor. Give it a Node Name you will recognise on the canvas, then fill it using + Add Action. The panel header counts what is inside — Actions (3) below.

Actions run in the order they are listed, one after another. The pencil opens an action for editing, the bin removes it. Keep one job per node: "Save the answer" and "Tag and notify" read far better on a canvas than one node called "Stuff".

+ Add Action opens the catalog. Create New is the built-in list below. Modules groups the actions that came with the modules installed in this bot. Saved Actions appears once you have saved an action for reuse. The search box at the top filters all three at once.

Set Variable writes a value into a variable: a fixed value, text with {{variable}} placeholders dropped in from the variable picker, or the output of an earlier action. For number variables the editor adds an Operation field, so you can increase or decrease a counter instead of overwriting it.

Read variables goes the other way. It loads variables into the node's outputs so later nodes can use them, and it can read another contact's variables, not only the current one's.

Delay pauses the flow, either for a relative amount of time (seconds, minutes, hours) or until a specific date and time. A short delay between two messages makes a bot feel less like a wall of text.

For anything longer than a few minutes, a sequence is the better tool — see below.

External Request asks another service for data over the web. In technical terms it sends an HTTP request to that service's API (the address programs use to talk to it): method, URL, headers, body. The response lands in the action's outputs, ready to drop into a later message.

API with fallback does the same with several interchangeable services. It tries them in order until one answers, with retries and caching.

Custom Code runs your own TypeScript when a plain request is not enough. AI Action runs a single prompt and stores the raw result — one call, not a conversation. For a back-and-forth conversation there is a separate node kind: The AI Chat Agent Node: Answer Questions From Your Knowledge Base.

These three can be slow. Open Additional Options on the node and turn on Run this Action block in background: the flow pauses before the block, does the slow work in the background, then resumes. The option is only available when the block contains AI, HTTP request or custom code actions.

Add Tag and Remove Tag label the current contact. Tags are how you segment people for broadcasts and conditions later.

Notify by Tag sends a message to every contact carrying a tag — the usual way to alert your admins. Service Notification notifies your team through the service bot and by email, and works from any channel. Start Conversation hands the chat to a human: it opens a live chat conversation and assigns it to a team or an agent.

Subscribe to Sequence enrolls the contact in a timed reminder sequence. The steps run in the background, so the flow continues immediately instead of waiting.

Unsubscribe from Sequence takes the contact out and cancels the remaining steps. Put it on the path where the person did the thing you were reminding them about — otherwise they keep getting nudged.

Set Language chooses which language the bot uses with this contact, from the languages your app supports. Multilingual Bots: One Bot, Many Languages shows where it fits.

Set Analytics Goal records a goal event for the current contact. It shows up under Analytics → Goals, which is how you find out whether the flow you spent an afternoon on actually gets people to the end.

Give goals short, stable keys. Renaming one later splits your history in two.

Create Order creates an order for the current contact with an amount and a currency. Update Order changes the status of an existing one, and Remove Order deletes one by id.

These are the bookkeeping half of a checkout: they record what was ordered. Taking the money is a Payment node, which is a separate node kind in the Add palette — Accept Payments in Telegram: Stars and Card Providers covers it.

Create Shop order, Prepare Shop payment and Confirm Shop payment are for the Shop Mini App checkout. They only work in flows that the Shop Mini App starts, so you can ignore them unless you run a shop.

Launch Mini App posts a button that opens a Telegram Mini App, so you can hand a task to a web page and come back with the result.

Emoji Captcha posts a "press the right emoji" grid and only lets verified people through. It is the standard way to keep automated spam out of a group.

Operations are flows that run on a schedule, without a person in the chat. Two actions appear only there:

• Launch Broadcast creates and sends a broadcast. An existing flow is the message, and an audience filter picks the recipients.
• Operation Guard stops the operation unless a condition holds. Use it as a safety check before anything goes out.

Everything above is built in. Installing a module adds its own actions to the same menu, listed under Modules and grouped by module — Google Sheets brings Insert Row, Update Row and Delete Row, and so on. They behave like any other action inside the node.

Browse more at the bottom of the menu opens the module marketplace without leaving the editor. Modules: Connect Sheets, AI, Payments and More covers installing and setting them up.

This page is a map, not a manual. Dedicated guides for most of these actions are on the way.

Most of the actions your bot will eventually need come from modules, so that is the next stop.

Modules: Connect Sheets, AI, Payments and More