Create Your First Telegram Bot in 10 Minutes

Guide

1. 1

   Get a token from BotFather (2 minutes)

   Every Telegram bot is owned by a Telegram account, and Telegram hands out the credentials — not us. You get them from a bot called BotFather.

   1. Open Telegram and search for @BotFather. It has a blue verified check.
   2. Send /newbot.
   3. It asks for a display name. This is what people see at the top of the chat — for example Acme Support.
   4. It asks for a username. This must be unique across all of Telegram and must end in bot — for example acme_support_bot. Expect a few tries; the good names are taken.
   5. BotFather replies with a token that looks like 123456:ABC-DEF1234ghIkl-zyx57W2v1u123ew11.

   Keep that message handy. The token is a password for your bot — anyone who has it can control it, so do not paste it into a public chat or a screenshot.

2. 2

   Create your workspace (1 minute)

   Sign up for FlowCastle, and on the first screen — Create your first automation — pick Start blank.

   All three options work, but "Start blank" is the clearest way to learn what the pieces are:

   • Start from template gives you a finished bot to adapt.
   • Build with AI writes the first draft from a sentence you type.
   • Start blank gives you a small working bot you can read end to end.

   "Start blank" is not actually empty. It seeds two flows so your bot answers from the very first minute:

   • Welcome flow — what people see when they message your bot
   • Main menu — an example menu with three buttons
3. 3

   Change the welcome message (3 minutes)

   You land on the Automation page. The canvas is your bot logic; the Flows list is on the left.

   Open Welcome flow. You will see three nodes joined by lines:

   • Starting Step — where a conversation begins
   • Welcome Message — the text your bot sends
   • Open Main Menu — the jump into your menu flow

   Click the Welcome Message node. The editor opens on the right. Replace the text with something that belongs to your bot — say what it does and what the person should do next. Click Save.

   Now open the Main menu flow and do the same to the three button labels and their replies. Rename 💬 Get help to whatever your bot actually helps with.

   That is the entire skill. A flow is nodes that send things and nodes that decide things, joined in the order they should happen.

4. 4

   Test before anyone sees it (1 minute)

   On the canvas toolbar, click Test.

   A preview chat opens and you talk to your bot exactly as a user would — before it is live, and without touching Telegram. The Logs tab next to Chat shows what the flow did at each step, which is where you look when something does not behave the way you expected.

   Walk your own menu. Press every button. Fix what reads badly, and press Test again.

5. 5

   Go live (2 minutes)

   Click Deploy on the toolbar. Because no channel is connected yet, the Go live window opens instead of deploying.

   Choose Telegram, paste the token from Step 1 into Bot token, and click Connect & publish.

   That single click connects the channel and publishes your flows — there is no second step to remember. The first deployment can take a few minutes.

   When it finishes, open Telegram, find your bot by the username you chose, and send /start. It answers.

6. 6

   Change something and ship it again (1 minute)

   Go back to the canvas, edit any message, and click Save.

   Check Telegram: the old text is still there. Edits live on the canvas until you publish them.

   Now click Deploy. This time there is no window — it publishes straight away. Message the bot again and the new text appears.

   This is the loop you will use forever after: edit → Test → Deploy. Remembering it is the single biggest difference between a bot that improves every week and one that quietly falls out of date.

   Where to go next

   • Add branching so the bot reacts differently to different answers: Condition Node Basics
   • Write better messages with buttons and variables: Message Node Basics
   • Put the same bot on your website, without building it twice: Embed Web Chat on Your Site

   If something did not work

   BotFather says the username is taken. Every Telegram username is global. Add your company name or a word that narrows it.

   The bot does not answer /start. Check that the deployment finished, and that you sent /start to the bot with your username — searching Telegram often surfaces a different bot with a similar name.

   Your changes are not showing up. Saving is not publishing. Click Deploy.