A Telegram bot is one of the most practical ways to deploy an AI assistant — your users already have Telegram, there's no app to install, and the Bot API is simple. This guide builds a fully functional AI bot with python-telegram-bot and the Claude API, including commands, inline keyboards, conversation history, error handling, and systemd deployment.
Prerequisites
Python 3.10+
Telegram Bot Token from @botfather
Anthropic API key (ANTHROPIC_API_KEY)