goyban
a35abb0541
Completes TODO #5. Forwarding a post now asks whether to save it whole or extract its media; sending media directly is unchanged. Built on forwarding rather than copying file_ids. The bot already has the post in its private chat with the owner, so it stores message ids and forwards them back. forwardMessages takes a list and keeps an album intact, which is what made the caption-plus-album case tractable; ids must be strictly ascending, so they are sorted on the way out. - Vault rows live in their own table and every query is scoped to an owner_id, so a guessed id cannot reach someone else's saved post. Nothing in the vault is searchable inline, moderated or federated, and the separate table makes that structural rather than a flag. - Albums arrive as separate messages with no completion signal, so they are buffered by media_group_id behind a 1s debounce and prompt once. - The add path now takes a list of items, so extracting an album stores every piece under one set of keywords instead of asking repeatedly. - /vault searches keywords and the original caption, since the point of a vault is finding something you never got round to tagging. - Retrieval failures are reported: a message id is a pointer into the chat, not a self-contained file_id, so clearing history breaks it. Three near-identical keyword collectors are now one helper. Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 5 <noreply@anthropic.com>
Memes Bot
A personal Telegram inline bot to store and search media (photos, GIFs, videos, voice, music, stickers, files) by keywords.
Requirements
- A server with Docker installed
- A Telegram bot token from @BotFather
Setup
1. Create the bot in BotFather
/newbot→ get your token/setinline→ enable inline mode, set a placeholder (e.g.Search memes...)
2. Find your Telegram user ID
You need your numeric Telegram user ID to whitelist yourself.
- Easiest: forward any message to @userinfobot — it replies with your ID
- Alternative: open Telegram Web, click your profile, the number in the URL is your ID
- For multiple users: repeat for each person and separate IDs with commas
3. Clone and configure
git clone https://git.goyban.com/goyban/memes_bot
cd memes_bot
cp .env.example .env
Edit .env:
BOT_TOKEN=your_telegram_bot_token_here
ALLOWED_USERS=123456789,987654321
4. Run
docker compose up -d --build
The database will be saved in ./bot_db/media.db.
Usage
Adding media — send the bot a photo, GIF, video, voice message, music file, sticker, or any document, then type keywords when prompted (comma-separated or one per message), then /done.
Round video messages are stored as regular videos: Telegram has no inline result type for video notes, so keeping them as video is what makes them searchable.
Searching inline — in any chat type @yourbotusername keyword to search and send.
Telegram suggests these commands as you type /, with a short description beside each suggestion.
Commands
| Command | Description |
|---|---|
/start |
Start the bot and show usage instructions |
/menu |
Show the available commands |
/list |
Show all saved media |
/vault [search] |
Retrieve a whole post you saved |
/review |
Review pending submissions one by one (admin only) |
/edit [search] |
Select a meme and edit its keywords (admin only) |
/delete <id> |
Remove an entry (get ID from /list; admin only) |
/cancel |
Cancel current add operation |
The vault — saving whole posts
Send the bot media directly and it behaves as it always has: it extracts the media and asks for keywords.
Forward a post to it instead and it asks what you want:
- Save whole post — keeps the post intact in your vault, caption and all. An album stays an album.
- Extract media — the existing behaviour, adding the media to your searchable library.
Retrieve saved posts with /vault [search], which matches your keywords and the original caption. Each result has a button to forward it back to you, and one to remove it.
Vault posts only come back inside this bot. Telegram's inline mode cannot forward an existing message, so
@yourbotusername keyworddoes not reach the vault. Retrieve the post in the bot chat, then forward it wherever you want.
The vault is per-user and private: it is stored separately from the meme library, every lookup is scoped to its owner, and nothing in it is ever moderated or shared.
Saving stores a pointer to the message in your chat with the bot rather than a copy of the media. If you clear your chat history with the bot, saved posts can no longer be retrieved — the bot tells you when that happens so you can forward them again.
Making the bot public
Set PUBLIC_MODE=true to open the bot to anyone who meets a membership requirement, instead of the ALLOWED_USERS list:
PUBLIC_MODE=true
ADMIN_USERS=123456789
REQUIRED_CHATS=@mychannel,@mygroup
REQUIRE_MODE=all
REQUIRED_CHATS accepts @username or numeric ids. The bot must be an admin in each one, otherwise it cannot check membership and everyone is refused. The bot verifies this at startup and logs an error naming any chat it cannot read. REQUIRE_MODE=all demands every chat; any accepts one. With REQUIRED_CHATS empty the bot is open to everyone.
Users who don't qualify get a message listing what to join. In inline search they see a tappable bar that opens the bot and explains the same thing, rather than empty results with no reason given.
Set
ADMIN_USERSbefore turning this on. With noADMIN_USERS, a private bot treats its users as admins — convenient for a one-person bot, but in public mode that would mean everyone. Public mode therefore grants admin to nobody untilADMIN_USERSis set, and logs an error at startup if you forget.
Membership answers are cached for five minutes, since inline search would otherwise query Telegram on every keystroke. Refusals are cached for only thirty seconds, so a user who has just joined gets in almost immediately.
Accepting submissions
Set ACCEPT_SUBMISSIONS=true in .env to let non-admin users send media too. Their submissions are stored but stay invisible — they don't appear in inline search or /list until a moderator approves them. Admins' own media is still saved directly.
Run /review to work through the queue. Each item is shown with its keywords and four buttons: approve, reject, fix keywords, or stop.
The queue keeps no cursor. /review always fetches the oldest pending item, so you can stop after three and come back tomorrow, and several moderators can review at the same time without stepping on each other — if two open the same item, the first decision wins and the second is told it was already handled.
Leave this off unless you mean it. With
ALLOWED_USERSempty, everyone is an allowed user, so turning submissions on would accept media from anyone who finds the bot.
Moving to another server
The only files you need to transfer are:
.envbot_db/media.db