A Telegram bot powered by Claude gives you a personal AI assistant accessible from your phone. In this tutorial you'll build one from scratch — handling messages, keeping conversation history, and deploying it.

Prerequisites

Python 3.10+

Anthropic API key

Telegram account

Step 1: Create a Telegram Bot

Open Telegram, search for @botfather

Send /newbot and follow the prompts

Copy the bot token (looks like 7123456789:AAF... )

Step 2: Install Dependencies

pip install python-telegram-bot anthropic

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Step 3: Basic Echo Bot

from telegram import Update from telegram.ext import Application , MessageHandler , filters , ContextTypes

BOT_TOKEN = " YOUR_TELEGRAM_BOT_TOKEN "

async def handle_message ( update : Update , context : ContextTypes . DEFAULT_TYPE ): text = update . message . text await update . message . reply_text ( f " You said: { text } " )

app = Application . builder (). token ( BOT_TOKEN ). build () app . add_handler ( MessageHandler ( filters .…