This repository contains the code for one of the most popular bots I've ever built for Telegram — @voicybot. It automatically converts all the audio messages to text when added to a group chat. Please, feel free to fork, add features and create pull requests so that everybody (over 12 000 000 people) can experience the features you've built.

The active bot interface is maintained in English and Russian in the locales folder.

• voicy — the main @voicybot code
• voicy-payments — payments service that used stripe to process payments for the Google Speech seconds of recognition; currently retired as the stats server for voicybot.com
• voicy-landing — borodutch.com landing page
• voicy-recognition — Recognition service for voicybot.com

1. Clone this repo: git clone https://github.com/backmeupplz/voicy
2. Launch a mongo database locally
3. Create .env file with the environment variables listed below
4. Install ffmpeg on machines that run local transcription workers
5. Run yarn in the root folder
6. Run yarn start

See examples in .env.sample file.

Optional live activity stream:

When the stream URL or token is missing, activity emitters are no-ops. Events are fire-and-forget and contain only anonymized chat labels, command names, media source kinds, and runtime/job milestones; Telegram message text, raw chat IDs, raw user IDs, file IDs, tokens, emails, and phone numbers must not be sent.

Any commit pushed to main gets deployed to @voicybot via CI Ninja.

Voicy queues incoming Telegram audio in Mongo and expects one or more authenticated worker clients to process those jobs. The Windows GPU worker is the supported local setup for Nikita's RTX 4070 Ti machine: it polls the backend worker API, downloads the queued audio source, runs a local transcription command on CUDA, and uploads the final transcript back to Voicy.

The worker API is mounted at /worker/v1 and requires Authorization: Bearer <VOICY_WORKER_TOKEN> on every request. Create a worker token from a trusted backend shell after building the TypeScript output:

yarn build-ts
MONGO='mongodb://...' yarn worker:create-client windows-4070-ti

Store the printed token only in the Windows worker environment as VOICY_WORKER_TOKEN; the backend stores only its SHA-256 hash. If a token is lost or exposed, create a replacement token and disable the old WorkerClient record in Mongo by setting enabled to false.

On the Windows machine, build this repo, install FFmpeg, Node.js 20+, Python 3.11, current NVIDIA drivers, and a CUDA-capable transcription stack such as faster-whisper. Configure the worker with:

$env:VOICY_WORKER_API_URL = "https://<voicy-host>/worker/v1"
$env:VOICY_WORKER_TOKEN = "voicy_worker_..."
$env:VOICY_WORKER_WORK_DIR = "C:\voicy-worker\jobs"
$env:VOICY_WORKER_ENGINE = "faster-whisper"
$env:VOICY_WORKER_MODEL = "large-v3"
$env:VOICY_WORKER_RESTART_DELAY_MS = "10000"
$env:VOICY_WORKER_TELEGRAM_BOT_TOKEN = "<telegram-bot-token>"
$env:VOICY_WORKER_TELEGRAM_API_URL = "http://127.0.0.1:8081"
$env:VOICY_WORKER_DOWNLOAD_CONCURRENCY = "2"
$env:VOICY_WORKER_TRANSCRIPTION_CONCURRENCY = "1"
$env:VOICY_WORKER_TRANSCRIBE_EXECUTABLE = "C:\voicy-worker\.venv\Scripts\python.exe"
$env:VOICY_WORKER_TRANSCRIBE_ARGS_JSON = '["C:\\voicy-worker\\transcribe.py","{input}","{output}","{language}","{model}"]'
yarn worker:run

For production on Windows, install the checked-in scheduled-task supervisor with scripts/install-windows-worker.ps1 instead of leaving the worker in an interactive terminal. It writes a local env file, starts scripts/run-windows-worker.ps1, logs crashes/restarts, and lets Task Scheduler restart the wrapper if the process is killed.

Set VOICY_MAX_MEDIA_FILE_SIZE_MB on the backend to tune the largest Telegram media message that Voicy will enqueue for local workers. For files above the cloud Bot API download limit, run a local Telegram Bot API server on the worker host and point VOICY_WORKER_TELEGRAM_API_URL at it; see docs/windows-worker-client.md for the scheduled-task installer and validation steps.

Production long polling deliberately drops Telegram's pending update backlog before startup by default (VOICY_DROP_PENDING_UPDATES_ON_STARTUP=true). This prevents old voice/audio messages from being replayed into new transcription jobs after deploys, restarts, or downtime. Message updates are also ignored when their Telegram date is older than the current bot process startup cutoff or older than VOICY_MAX_TELEGRAM_UPDATE_AGE_SECONDS seconds, defaulting to 300.

Before restarting production, pause local transcription workers if there are active claimable jobs, deploy/restart the bot, confirm logs include the pending update drop, and then restart workers only after the backend is accepting fresh updates. Operators should expect voice/audio messages sent while the bot was down to be discarded rather than transcribed late.

Telegram Guest Mode is supported through guest_message updates from Bot API 10.0. Enable Guest Mode for @voicybot in BotFather's Mini App settings before deploying this flow. A user can reply to a voice, audio, video note, video, or supported media document with @voicybot in a supported chat where Voicy is not a member; Voicy answers the guest_query_id once, stores the returned inline_message_id, and edits that guest reply for progress and the final transcript. Guest chats are stored separately as guest:<telegram chat id> so they do not collide with normal chat records. Access checks and abuse limits run against that guest record and the caller/source user; an existing paid normal chat record is not assumed to match the guest chat because Telegram does not guarantee that identity mapping. Guest Mode does not provide chat history or participant lists, and long transcripts are limited to one edited guest reply.

The donation wall is temporarily disabled by default for testing. Leave VOICY_DONATION_WALL_ENABLED=false unset or false to let unpaid chats enqueue voice/audio transcription. Set VOICY_DONATION_WALL_ENABLED=true to re-enable the paid-chat gate while keeping the Stripe /donate flow and webhook support intact. When the wall is enabled, paid chats bypass the free allowance entirely. Unpaid chats can still enqueue up to 50 lifetime free transcriptions per Telegram user when the voice/audio sender is currently a member of @golden_borodutch; Voicy checks that membership live with getChatMember and fails closed if the bot cannot read the channel membership.

Stripe /donate uses Checkout Sessions with inline price_data, so no dashboard Price IDs are required for Voicy donation tiers. Configure STRIPE_MINIMUM_AMOUNT=699, STRIPE_FIXED_AMOUNTS=699,999,1299,1599, STRIPE_CURRENCY=usd, and STRIPE_WEBHOOK_SIGNING_SECRET. Webhook activation validates the signed Checkout session, chat metadata, currency, selected amount, tier, and line item before marking only that chat as paid. Users can choose a fixed tier from /donate or send /donate 12.34 to pay another amount above the minimum.

See docs/windows-worker-client.md for the full Windows setup, environment variables, retry behavior, and validation steps. See docs/worker-api.md for the authenticated API contract.

For the local test bot runtime, use the repo-supported LaunchAgent installer so the worker is restarted by launchd with a full executable path. Build first, export the worker API/token environment, then inspect the generated plist:

yarn build-ts
export VOICY_WORKER_API_URL=http://127.0.0.1:3000/worker/v1
export VOICY_WORKER_TOKEN=voicy_worker_...
export VOICY_WORKER_TRANSCRIBE_EXECUTABLE="$(command -v node)"
export VOICY_WORKER_TRANSCRIBE_ARGS_JSON='["scripts/whisper-transcriber.js","{input}","{output}","{language}"]'
yarn worker:print-macos-test-launchd

Load it after the output looks right:

yarn worker:install-macos-test-launchd

The generated LaunchAgent sets PATH to include /opt/homebrew/bin and /usr/local/bin, and sets VOICY_WHISPER_COMMAND to the resolved whisper executable when available. This avoids launchd failures such as spawn whisper ENOENT when Homebrew is not present in the default launchd environment.

Check the local bot, worker, Mongo, Whisper command, and queued job health with:

MONGO=mongodb://127.0.0.1:27017/voicy yarn test:local-runtime-health

For the live Telegram proof loop, send a fresh voice message to the test bot, run the health check above, and verify in Mongo that the newest transcriptionjobs document moves from queued to processing to completed. The Telegram chat should receive the completed transcript reply after the worker submits the result.

MIT — use for any purpose. Would be great if you could leave a note about the original developers. Thanks!