TIHelperBot — Tech Immigrants Community Bot

A Telegram bot that manages the Tech Immigrants community with automated join approval, spam moderation, analytics, and cross-platform publishing.

Features

Phase 1 (Current)

• Smart join approval — Automatically assess and approve/decline join requests based on spam signals
• Anti-spam moderation — Detect and remove self-promotion, warn/mute/ban repeat offenders
• AI-assisted detection — Uses Claude for borderline cases where heuristics aren't enough

Phase 2 (Planned)

• Community analytics — trending topics, engagement tracking, weekly digests

Phase 3 (Planned)

• Cross-platform publishing — auto-post channel content to LinkedIn, X, Instagram

Setup

1. Create the bot

Talk to @BotFather on Telegram:

1. /newbot
2. Name: Tech Immigrants Helper
3. Username: TIHelperBot
4. Copy the token

2. Configure environment

cp .env.example .env
# Edit .env with your tokens

3. Install dependencies

pip install -r requirements.txt

4. Add bot to your group

1. Add @TIHelperBot to your Telegram group
2. Promote it to admin with permissions:
   • Delete messages
   • Ban users
   • Invite users (for approving join requests)
3. Enable "Approve New Members" in group settings so join requests go through the bot

5. Run

cd src
python main.py

Architecture

src/
├── main.py                 # Entry point, handler registration
├── config.py               # Environment & settings
├── handlers/
│   ├── join_requests.py    # Auto-approve/decline logic
│   ├── moderation.py       # Spam detection & enforcement
│   └── admin_commands.py   # /start, /stats, /approve_all
├── services/
│   └── spam_checker.py     # Heuristic + AI spam assessment
└── models/                 # DB models (Phase 2)

Deployment

Designed for serverless (AWS Lambda + webhook) but runs in polling mode for development. See infra/ for deployment configs (coming soon).

License

Private — Tech Immigrants internal use.