Kowalski (Node.js Telegram Bot)

Kowalski is a a simple Telegram bot made in Node.js.

• You can find Kowalski at @KowalskiNodeBot on Telegram.

Self-host requirements

Important

You will only need all of them if you are not running it dockerized. Read "Running with Docker" for more information.

• Node.js 23 or newer (you can also use Bun)
• A Telegram bot (create one at @BotFather)
• FFmpeg (only for the /yt command)
• Docker and Docker Compose (only required for Docker setup)

Running locally (non-Docker setup)

First, clone the repo with Git:

git clone --recurse-submodules https://github.com/ABOCN/TelegramBot

Next, inside the repository directory, create a config.env file with some content, which you can see the example .env file to fill info with. To see the meaning of each one, see the Functions section.

After editing the file, save all changes and run the bot with npm start.

Tip

To deal with dependencies, just run npm install or npm i at any moment to install all of them.

Running with Docker

Important

Please complete the above steps to prepare your local copy for building. You do not need to install FFmpeg on your host system.

Note

Using the -d flag when running causes Kowalski to run in the background. If you're just playing around or testing, you may not want to use this flag.

You can also run Kowalski using Docker, which simplifies the setup process. Make sure you have Docker and Docker Compose installed.

Using Docker Compose

1. Make sure to setup your config.env file first!

2. Run the container

   docker compose up -d
   

Using Docker Run

If you prefer to use Docker directly, you can use these instructions instead.

1. Make sure to setup your config.env file first!

2. Build the image

   docker build -t kowalski .
   

3. Run the container

   docker run -d --name kowalski --restart unless-stopped -v $(pwd)/config.env:/usr/src/app/config.env:ro kowalski
   

config.env Functions

Important

Take care of your config.env file, as it is so much important and needs to be secret (like your passwords), as anyone can do whatever they want to the bot with this token!

• botSource: Put the link to your bot source code.
• botPrivacy: Put the link to your bot privacy policy.
• maxRetries: Maximum number of retries for a failing command on Kowalski. Default is 5. If the limit is hit, the bot will crash past this number.
• botToken: Put your bot token that you created at @BotFather.
• botAdmins: Put the ID of the people responsible for managing the bot. They can use some administrative + exclusive commands on any group.
• lastKey: Last.fm API key, for use on lastfm.js functions, like see who is listening to what song and etc.
• weatherKey: Weather.com API key, used for the /weather command.

Troubleshooting

YouTube Downloading

Q: I get a "Permission denied (EACCES)" error in the console when running the /yt command

A: Make sure src/plugins/yt-dlp/yt-dlp is executable. You can do this on Linux like so:

chmod +x src/plugins/yt-dlp/yt-dlp

Contributors

Made with contrib.rocks.

About/License

BSD-3-Clause - 2024 Lucas Gabriel (lucmsilva).