I’m working on linking my SillyTavern AI character to Telegram so I can have conversations through the messaging app. I tried ChatBridge before but ran into constant issues - it would stop working randomly and seemed like it wasn’t being updated anymore.
My goal is to create a reliable connection where:
Messages sent from Telegram reach my SillyTavern character
The AI character’s responses get sent back to my Telegram chat
Eventually support advanced features like image creation, voice messages, or emotional responses
I’m willing to explore different approaches including SillyTavern-Extras, custom webhooks, FastAPI implementations, or building something from scratch using Python with ngrok for tunneling. I have some components already functioning but need guidance on connecting everything properly.
Has anyone successfully built this kind of integration? Any recommendations or tutorials would be greatly appreciated!
tbh i gave up on chatbridge too after it kept breaking. what worked for me was using webhook approach with flask - way simpler than expected. basically telegram sends messages to your webhook endpoint, you forward them to sillytavern api, then send response back to telegram. ngrok handles the tunneling part pretty well. main issue i had was rate limiting but adding small delays fixed that.
I managed to get this working using the Telegram Bot API combined with SillyTavern’s API endpoints. The key was setting up a proper middleware script that handles the communication between both services. I used Python with the python-telegram-bot library and made HTTP requests to SillyTavern’s local API (usually running on port 8000). The tricky part was managing conversation context and character persistence between messages. You’ll need to store chat history temporarily and pass it correctly to maintain conversation flow. For reliability, I added error handling and reconnection logic since SillyTavern can occasionally drop connections. Started with basic text messaging first, then gradually added features like image support through SillyTavern-Extras. Running everything locally with proper port forwarding has been more stable than using external bridges in my experience.
FastAPI worked better for me than Flask when I built something similar. The async support handles multiple telegram conversations much smoother without blocking. I ended up creating a simple queue system to manage requests since SillyTavern sometimes takes a while to generate responses, especially with longer prompts. The main challenge was keeping the character card settings consistent - telegram messages don’t carry the same context structure that SillyTavern expects internally. I had to write a small parser that converts telegram message format into proper SillyTavern chat format with the right character context. Authentication was another headache initially but storing session tokens solved most connection issues. Running it on a VPS instead of local machine with ngrok gave me much better uptime overall.