Hello everyone! I’m in the process of developing a Telegram bot that serves as a personal assistant for scheduling appointments. The concept is straightforward: you can type a message like “set up a meeting with Mike” and it will take care of everything automatically.
A key aspect of this project is managing the contact details (names, emails, phone numbers) for all the individuals my client needs to coordinate with. Since it’s designed for just one user (my client), I don’t require anything overly complicated.
I’m considering a few different solutions:
- Airtable - appears to be user-friendly and allows my client to update contacts directly
- Supabase - tailored more for developers with excellent API capabilities
- Pinecone - this might be more than what I need for basic contact management
What do you think would be the best option for this personal assistant project? I’m looking for a reliable solution that’s not too complex, given it only needs to manage one person’s contacts and calendar tasks.
Thank you for your input!
Built something similar last year for our team’s scheduling system. Skip Pinecone - total overkill for contact management.
Go with Airtable over Supabase here. Your client can edit contacts directly without bugging you every time they need to add someone or update a number.
I used a pure database solution for a client once. Every tiny change meant they had to message me or I had to build an admin interface. Huge pain.
Airtable gives you both - solid API for your bot to read/write data, plus your client gets a spreadsheet interface they actually understand. Webhook support works great for real-time updates too.
Watch out for rate limits if your bot gets chatty, but for single-user scheduling you’ll never hit them.
Supabase would be better for complex builds or real-time features. But for contact management and basic scheduling, Airtable saves dev time and keeps clients happy.
I’ve used both extensively and I’d go with Supabase here. Sure, Airtable’s interface is nice, but Supabase’s PostgreSQL backend crushes it for complex queries when your bot searches contacts or matches partial names. The real killer feature? Row level security and auth system. Even for single-user setups, you get proper data protection out of the box. Real-time subscriptions are a game changer too - your bot instantly knows about calendar conflicts when they happen. Airtable’s API gets weird with concurrent requests, which sucks when your bot handles multiple scheduling requests at once. Supabase handles this way better with actual database connections. For client contact management, just build a simple web interface using Supabase’s dashboard or throw together a basic CRUD form. Takes half a day but you get complete control instead of being stuck with Airtable’s limitations.