Productivity

Analyze Telegram Images with AI

Describe photos sent to a Telegram bot and reply in the same chat.

Setup

Connect the same Telegram bot to Receive a Telegram message, Identify the connected bot, Get the photo path, Ask for an image and Send the analysis. Create a secret Variable for that bot token and bind it to Verify the download token and Download the photo. Grant Telegram Provider API Request permission and HTTP access to api.telegram.org. Restrict the trigger to intended chats or users. Connect OpenAI in Analyze the image and choose a vision-capable model.

In n8n, connect Telegram and OpenAI and select a vision-capable model in Analyze image. Only one Telegram webhook can be active per bot; enable one format.

Behavior

A Telegram photo is downloaded and analyzed with the prompt “What’s in this image?”; the description goes back to the same chat. Open Flow selects the last Telegram photo variant. n8n selects the third variant when present and otherwise the first, following its trigger default. A message without a photo receives “Please Upload an Image ….” after three hours, matching the source Wait node’s default unit. The delay can be adjusted in the Wait node.

Open Flow verifies that the download token identifies the connected bot. Its webhook verifies the Telegram secret; the n8n 1.1 Telegram trigger also checks its configured secret header. Open Flow accepts JPEG photos up to 700,000 bytes so the image and Base64 representation fit host limits. Oversized, invalid or failed downloads stop; n8n has its own service limits. Images and descriptions can appear in execution data; restrict access. Check Telegram before repeating an uncertain reply.

Inspiration & credits

Changes to the source

Replace the retired vision-preview model with a configurable current vision-capable model. Open Flow uses OpenAI Responses; n8n keeps its image-analysis node.
Preserve the source’s three-hour no-photo Wait and make it explicit. Open Flow adds bot identity and image validation before analysis.

Adapted from Automated Image Analysis and Response via Telegram in Zie619/n8n-workflows. The matching n8n community listing credits AlQaisi. The original template does not state a separate license.

The collection’s MIT notice is pinned at a later revision. This is the collection notice at that revision; it does not establish a separate original template author’s license. Our changes are listed above; see repository licensing.

MIT License

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