LingoDesk 🌐

Chat with the world in your native language on Telegram. Receive → translate → reply → translate. Fully automatic.

Website · Illustrated setup guide · 中文文档

Customers message your personal Telegram account in any language. LingoDesk (via Telegram Business) translates every message into your language and drops it into a dedicated topic in your private console group — one topic per contact. You reply in your language; it's translated back, previewed for your confirmation, and sent as you. The other side never sees a bot.

Features

• Inbound: auto-translated bilingual cards per contact topic; sticker/emoji recognition; photos, voice, documents and video forwarded into the topic and archived locally
• Outbound: type in your language → translated → preview → sent from your own account on confirmation; send files directly too
• Robust: Claude as the primary engine with optional OpenAI fallback; business_connection_id auto-refreshed and persisted; per-contact language lock; topics auto-archive after 7 idle days and revive on new messages
• Commands: /lang <code> to correct a contact's language, /help for the list

Two ways to run it

1. Cloud-hosted (default — no server, no code): do the Telegram-side setup from your phone and send us your bot token; we run everything, translation engine included. Follow the illustrated setup guide (~10 minutes). Free during beta.
2. Self-host — free and open source, quick start below.

Self-host requirements

• Telegram Premium (Telegram Business relay is Premium-only — hard requirement for both modes)
• Node.js ≥ 20 (or Docker)
• An Anthropic API key (plus an optional OpenAI key as fallback)

Quick start (self-host)

1. Create a bot with @BotFather (/newbot), then in Bot Settings turn Business Mode on and Group Privacy off.
2. Phone → Settings → Telegram Business → Chatbots → link your bot with the Reply to messages permission.
3. Create a group with the bot, enable Topics, promote the bot to admin with Manage Topics.
4. Then:

git clone https://github.com/sanxiaozi/lingodesk.git
cd lingodesk
npm install
cp .env.example .env   # only BOT_TOKEN and ANTHROPIC_API_KEY are required
npm run db:push        # initialize SQLite (first run only)
npm run start          # or: npm run dev (hot reload)

5. Send /bind in your console group — the group ID and your user ID are detected automatically, nothing to look up.

Stuck anywhere? The illustrated guide covers every screen and every known pitfall.

Deploy on your server

Docker (recommended):

git clone https://github.com/sanxiaozi/lingodesk.git && cd lingodesk
cp .env.example .env   # fill in the four required values
docker compose up -d --build
docker compose logs -f # watch the startup banner

Database and media archives persist in ./data and ./storage on the host.

Bare Node with pm2:

pm2 start "npm run start" --name lingodesk
pm2 save && pm2 startup

⚠️ One bot token = one running instance globally, or Telegram answers 409 Conflict.

Known limitation

BUSINESS_PEER_USAGE_MISSING: a Telegram Business rule — the bot can only reply to contacts who messaged you recently; it cannot initiate to long-idle chats. Ask the contact to send anything to reactivate, or reply manually from your phone that once (your draft is kept).

Architecture & roadmap

See PLAN.md: M0 single-tenant MVP (current) → M1 multi-tenant SaaS → M2 billing & hosted service.

License

MIT