RouteKit vs Telegram Bot API

The Telegram way

• Create a bot via BotFather and store the token.
• Choose between long-polling and webhooks (polling is simpler but wastes resources; webhooks require a public URL and TLS).
• Parse Telegram's Update objects, which nest messages inside different fields depending on type (message, edited_message, channel_post, callback_query).
• Handle Telegram-specific concepts like chat IDs, inline keyboards, reply markup, and parse modes (HTML vs MarkdownV2).
• Manage bot commands separately from regular messages.

import { Telegraf } from "telegraf";

const bot = new Telegraf(process.env.TELEGRAM_BOT_TOKEN);

bot.on("text", async (ctx) => {
  const reply = await yourAgent(ctx.message.text);
  await ctx.reply(reply);
});

bot.launch();

from telegram.ext import (
    ApplicationBuilder,
    MessageHandler,
    filters,
)

async def handle_message(update, context):
    reply = await your_agent(update.message.text)
    await update.message.reply_text(reply)

app = (
    ApplicationBuilder()
    .token(os.environ["TELEGRAM_BOT_TOKEN"])
    .build()
)
app.add_handler(MessageHandler(filters.TEXT, handle_message))
app.run_polling()

The RouteKit way

Configure Telegram as a channel in the RouteKit dashboard. Your agent code is the same whether messages come from Telegram or any other channel.

import { RouteKit } from "routekit";

const routeKit = new RouteKit();

routeKit.on("message", async (msg) => {
  const reply = await yourAgent(msg.text);
  await msg.reply(reply);
});

What you skip

No node-telegram-bot-api, telegraf, python-telegram-bot or aiogram dependency. No Telegram-specific auth flow or message parsing. If you later add other channels, your code does not change.