Build a Self-Hosted Telegram AI Bot — Your Infrastructure, Your Data

To self-host a Telegram AI bot you need hardware with at least 16GB RAM running Docker Desktop or a Docker-compatible Linux environment. Your laptop works for development and personal use. For always-on deployment, a VPS with 16GB RAM is ideal. The workshop covers both infrastructure options in the deployment module.

Once set up, a self-hosted Telegram AI bot requires minimal maintenance — occasional Docker Model Runner and OpenClaw updates, and monitoring to ensure the Telegram connection stays active. The workshop covers maintenance procedures and how to automate restarts if the bot goes offline.

A Raspberry Pi 5 with 8GB RAM can self-host a Telegram AI bot running a small model like Phi-3 Mini. Performance is modest but workable for personal use. The instructor covers self-hosting on low-power hardware as an option during the deployment module.

Before OpenClaw, self-hosting a Telegram AI bot required significantly more custom development — building the Telegram bot framework, LLM integration, and conversation management from scratch. OpenClaw provides a complete framework that reduces a weeks-long development project to a 4-hour live workshop.

Yes. OpenClaw supports multiple authorised users through its allowlist system. A single self-hosted Telegram AI bot instance can serve multiple Telegram users simultaneously, with each conversation managed independently. Resource usage scales with the number of concurrent conversations.

Telegram's built-in AI features process your messages on Telegram's servers. A self-hosted Telegram AI bot powered by Docker Model Runner processes messages entirely on your own infrastructure — giving you complete data privacy, control over the AI model, and no dependency on Telegram's AI systems.