@catalogicus-international/n8n-nodes-telegram-advance

An n8n community package for Telegram-native human-in-the-loop workflows. It sends a question and waits for the user to respond inside Telegram with an inline button or a reply. No n8n approval page, redirect link, or external response form is opened.

Nodes

Telegram Advance

Use this node to send a regular Telegram message or wait until a human responds. When asking a question, the node sends the message and then polls Telegram (getUpdates) itself until the user answers or the wait limit is reached — all within a single execution. The send-and-wait operation supports:

• Approval — approve and decline inline buttons;
• Choice — custom inline buttons, for example a product or delivery option;
• Linked List — select one item, open its URL, then finish the workflow;
• Radio Buttons — select one item, then confirm with a submit button;
• Checkboxes — select any number of items, then confirm with a submit button;
• Free Text — the user replies directly to the bot message.

Approval questions can also show a non-clickable, left-aligned list above the approve and decline buttons. Set Display List to an expression returning an array of strings, numbers, or objects with a label field:

{{ $json.items.map((item) => ({
  label: item.name + ' — ' + item.price
})) }}

Choice, radio-button, and checkbox options can be defined manually or generated from an expression. Select Expression as the choice source and return an array of objects containing label and value, for example:

{{ $json.items.map((item, index) => ({
  label: item.name + ' — ' + item.price,
  value: index
})) }}

For radio buttons, checkboxes, and linked lists, label may contain line breaks. Add optional price and currencyCode fields to show a highlighted right-side price in radio/checkbox rows. Linked lists show the same price on a separate line inside the selectable row so long product names do not hide it:

{{ $json.items.map((item, index) => ({
  label: item.name + '\n' + item.package,
  value: index,
  price: item.price,
  currencyCode: item.currency
})) }}

Linked lists use the same source modes, but every item also needs a link field. Each row shows a multi-line selectable item with an inline Перейти URL button on the right, and the ✅ Завершить button returns the selected item to the next workflow step:

{{ $json.items.map((item) => ({
  label: item.name,
  value: item.sku,
  link: item.url,
  price: item.price,
  currencyCode: item.currency
})) }}

The node resumes with data shaped like:

{
  "response": {
    "type": "choice",
    "value": "sku-123",
    "label": "Product A",
    "user": {
      "id": 123456789,
      "username": "example"
    },
    "chat": {
      "id": 123456789
    },
    "questionMessageId": 42,
    "receivedAt": "2026-06-21T12:00:00.000Z"
  }
}

Approval responses also contain approved: true or approved: false. Free-text responses contain text and return the same value in value. Radio and checkbox responses return zero-based selected option indexes in value and selectedIndices, plus the configured option values and labels:

{
  "response": {
    "type": "checkbox",
    "value": [0, 2],
    "selectedIndices": [0, 2],
    "values": ["sku-123", "sku-789"],
    "labels": ["Product A", "Product C"]
  }
}

Linked-list responses return the selected item and the pressed finish button:

{
  "response": {
    "type": "linkedList",
    "value": "cement-akkermann-m500-50",
    "label": "Цемент AKKERMANN М500 50 кг 670 ₽",
    "link": "https://example.com/cement-akkermann-m500-50",
    "selectedIndex": 0,
    "buttonValue": "finish",
    "buttonLabel": "✅ Завершить"
  }
}

Wait settings

• Wait Limit Amount / Unit — how long the node keeps polling before giving up. The node holds the execution open for this whole time, so prefer minutes for interactive approvals.
• On Timeout — return a { "timedOut": true } item so you can branch on it, or throw an error.

Telegram Advance Trigger

Use this trigger to start a workflow from incoming Telegram messages, edited messages, channel posts, or callback queries. It uses long polling, so it does not require a public webhook URL. You can optionally restrict events by chat or sender ID.

The trigger shares the same per-bot update stream as waiting questions. This lets one bot receive ordinary updates while also handling Telegram Advance approval, choice, and reply waits.

Telegram Advance AI Webhook

Use this node when an n8n AI Agent should call Telegram as a tool while answers arrive through Telegram webhooks. It exposes the same send and send-and-wait surface as Telegram Advance Webhook, declares usableAsTool, and relies on an active Telegram Advance Webhook Trigger on the same bot to deliver button presses and free-text replies to the waiting execution.

Setup

1. Create a bot with BotFather and copy its token.
2. Create Telegram Advance API credentials in n8n.
3. Add Telegram Advance where the workflow should send a message or ask a question, and select the credentials.

No public URL, inbound HTTPS, or separate trigger is required — only outbound access to api.telegram.org.

For free-text questions, the user must reply to the bot's question message. This lets the node distinguish its own awaited answer from unrelated chat messages.

Reliability notes

While a question is waiting, the node polls getUpdates from inside the running execution, so the execution stays active (and holds a worker) until the user answers or the wait limit elapses. Keep wait limits short for interactive approvals.

Telegram permits only one getUpdates consumer per bot. Telegram Advance uses one shared poller per bot inside an n8n process, so concurrent waiting questions and trigger subscriptions in that process can coexist. Do not run another Telegram poller for the same bot. Before polling, the node clears any existing webhook so getUpdates can take over.

In queue mode, configure Redis in the credentials. Redis elects one polling worker per bot and fans its updates out to the other workers, preventing cross-worker 409 Conflict errors. It also keeps completed responses briefly for first-answer-wins deduplication and pickup by concurrent executions. The first Redis URL and namespace used in a process become process-wide, so use the same Redis configuration for every Telegram Advance credential in that process.

A pending wait still lives in the worker that started it and does not survive that worker restarting. If Redis is unavailable, the package logs a warning and falls back to process-local polling.

Development

pnpm install
pnpm run lint
pnpm test

Resources

• Telegram Bot API
• n8n community node documentation

License

MIT