Photon vs Telegram Bot API

Photon

Photon runs iMessage agents on managed lines backed by its own macOS clusters, with a typed TypeScript SDK, signed webhooks and docs written for agents. Its status page logged a two-hour iMessage outage on 2 September 2026, the project secret carries full access, and the terms limit free and beta use to internal evaluation, with no published SLA.

Telegram Bot API

Telegram's first-party bot interface is free, needs no card and documents 185 methods on one page with a dated changelog and numeric send limits. No OpenAPI document, status page, SLA or idempotency key was found, one token controls the whole bot and travels in the URL, and a person must create the bot in a chat with @BotFather.

Photon

1. Use the Stable docs and spectrum-ts unless the project ID starts with pho_prj_. Stable and Beta packages, hosts and credentials don't mix
2. Design flows so the person texts first. Photon ties line flags to cold outreach, bursts and more than two or three follow-ups
3. Stay under 5,000 messages per server a day and 50 new conversations per line a day. Further sends are rejected until the window resets
4. Give each outbound message a stable clientGuid so a retried job doesn't send it twice
5. Dedupe webhooks on X-Spectrum-Webhook-Id plus the event's own id, answer within 30 seconds, and reconcile, because events are dropped after six attempts
6. Keep the project secret out of the agent's context. It grants full management access and doesn't expire

Telegram Bot API

1. Send POST https://api.telegram.org/bot<token>/sendMessage with chat_id and text. Keep the token out of logs, because it is part of the URL.
2. On HTTP 429 wait the parameters.retry_after seconds before retrying. Stay under one message a second per chat and 20 a minute per group.
3. Call getUpdates with offset set to the last update_id plus one, or the same updates return. Updates are kept for at most 24 hours.
4. A retried send can post twice, as there is no idempotency key. Record the returned message_id before retrying after a timeout.
5. In groups the bot sees only commands and replies unless privacy mode is disabled in @BotFather or the bot is an admin.