Guide to Creating Your Own Bots from Scratch

🧩 So, What Changed?

In the last post, I talked about this cool bot I found — a Telegram bot that handed out disposable emails and pinged you when you got mail. Super handy. But using that tool sparked something deeper:

"Why not build my own bot?"

Spoiler alert: I did.

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⚙️ What I Wanted To Build

I wanted a bot that wasn’t just a gimmick — something that:

• 🤝 Responds to commands like /start, /help, and /about

• 🧠 Remembers user sessions and states

• 📨 Lets users send a fake email from Telegram to an actual inbox

• 🚀 Maybe, just maybe, automate future workflows with buttons, menus, and replies

Basically, I wanted it to feel less like a bot and more like a cyber sidekick.

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🔧 Tools & Stack

• Language: Python 3

• Bot Framework: python-telegram-bot

• Hosting: Railway (yes, I’m cheap and lazy)

• Email Relay: Integrated with SMTP for outbound fake emails

• Extras: Markdown formatting, async functions, and custom keyboards for replies

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🛠️ The Build Process (With Dumb Mistakes I Made)

Step 1: Setting Up the Bot Token 🔑

Grabbed the token from @BotFather (yes, still feels like talking to mafia). Put it in a .env file — lesson learned from hardcoding it once and almost pushing to GitHub. 😅

Step 2: Basic Command Handling 🚦

Wired up /start, /help, and /reset. Pretty straightforward.

@bot.message_handler(commands=['start'])
def send_welcome(message):
    bot.reply_to(message, "Hey, I'm your cyber mailman. Type /help to see what I do.")

Step 3: Sending Emails via Telegram 📤

Hooked up the backend with SMTP. Had the user enter subject ➝ recipient ➝ body — in that order.

Also added some basic validation because people type like goblins.

Step 4: Buttons & Flow ✨

Instead of plain text, I used Telegram inline buttons. So now, it’s tap-and-go instead of sending a wall of text.

InlineKeyboardButton("Send New Email", callback_data='send_email')

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🧠 What I Learned

• How to use inline queries and callback handlers

• That bot UX is way harder than expected

• Sending emails from bots is easy, validating human input is not

• Hosting bots that don't go offline is a full-time job

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🚀 Future Plans

• Add a dashboard for viewing sent emails

• Schedule emails using cron

• Integrate with GPT for auto-generating email replies 🤯

• Maybe… maybe even turn it into a public utility?

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TL;DR

I used a Telegram bot. I liked it. I built my own bot. It sends fake emails and talks like me.

Moral of the story? Curiosity + caffeine = shipping cool shit.

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Built with 💻, ☕, and a hint of "I wonder if this breaks..."

Link? Have it: https://t.me/mailer3000bot?start=_tgr_nrqbUw5iYWRl