Telegram Bot Sessions

telegram-bot-sessions Skill

How to persist user state in a Telegram bot — why it's needed, how grammY solves it, how the toolkit wraps it.

Built for the agntdev pipeline. See agnt-cli-builder for the discovery-and-claim loop. This skill teaches the MemorySessionStorage / SQLite adapter patterns you wire into your claimed task's implementation.

1. Why Sessions Are Needed (Bot API)

Telegram Bot API is stateless. Every Update arrives as a fresh HTTP request. The bot has no built-in memory of what a user did before.

User: "I want to book"
Bot:  "What service?"
User: "Haircut"
Bot:  "When?"
User:  "Tomorrow 2pm"
Bot:  "Booked!"

Without state, the bot can't know that "Haircut" answers the "What service?" question vs being a random message. It has no memory of the conversation step.

How Bot API handles it — there is no built-in mechanism

Bot API just delivers Updates. It's up to the bot to:

1. Remember who is at what step
2. Store partial data between messages
3. Clear state when a flow completes

Option: Database. Write user state to SQLite/Redis on every message. Works but adds latency + complexity.

Option: In-memory Map. Fast but lost on restart. Fine for dev, bad for production.

Option: grammY sessions. The framework abstracts this away.

2. grammY Sessions — The Framework Solution

grammY provides a session() plugin that stores per-chat state and makes it available as ctx.session.

Basic setup

import { Bot, session } from "grammy";

interface SessionData {
  step: string;
  service?: string;
}

const bot = new Bot(token);

bot.use(session({
  initial: (): SessionData => ({ step: "idle" }),
  // storage: ...  // defaults to in-memory Map
}));

bot.command("book", async (ctx) => {
  ctx.session.step = "choosing_service";
  await ctx.reply("What service?");
});

bot.on("message:text", async (ctx) => {
  if (ctx.session.step === "choosing_service") {
    ctx.session.service = ctx.message.text;
    ctx.session.step = "choosing_time";
    await ctx.reply("What time?");
  }
});

Session key

grammY keys sessions by chatId_userId ("12345_67890"). This means:

• Private chats: one session per user (chat and user are the same person)
• Group chats: one session shared by all users in the chat
• Session is per-chat, not per-user globally

Session flavor — typing ctx.session

import { session, type SessionFlavor } from "grammy";

type MyContext = Context & SessionFlavor<SessionData>;

const bot = new Bot<MyContext>(token);
bot.use(session({ initial: () => ({ step: "idle" }) }));

// ctx.session is now typed:
bot.command("book", async (ctx) => {
  ctx.session.step = "choosing";  // TypeScript knows this field
});

StorageAdapter interface

grammY sessions work with any storage backend that implements:

interface StorageAdapter<T> {
  read(key: string): T | undefined;
  write(key: string, value: T): void;
  delete(key: string): void;
  has(key: string): boolean;
  readAllKeys(): string[];
}

Built-in options:

• Default — in-memory Map (fast, lost on restart, fine for dev)
• SQLite — durable, survives restarts (add @grammyjs/storage-sqlite)
• Redis — fast + durable (add @grammyjs/storage-redis)
• Firebase, MongoDB, Supabase — community adapters available

3. The toolkit (src/toolkit/) — Session Defaults

MemorySessionStorage

The inlined toolkit (at src/toolkit/ in the bot-starter template) ships MemorySessionStorage — a grammY-compatible StorageAdapter backed by Map.

import { MemorySessionStorage } from "../src/toolkit/storage/memory.js";

// Implements StorageAdapter:
const store = new MemorySessionStorage<SessionData>();
store.write("123_456", { step: "idle" });
store.read("123_456");    // { step: "idle" }
store.has("123_456");     // true
store.delete("123_456");
store.readAllKeys();      // []

You rarely instantiate it directly. createBot() uses it by default:

const bot = createBot<Session>(token, {
  initial: () => ({ step: "idle" }),
  // storage omitted → MemorySessionStorage used automatically
});

Session shape design

Keep sessions flat and serializable — no functions, no class instances, no circular refs:

interface Session {
  // Dialog state
  step: string;

  // Flow data (optional until set)
  serviceId?: string;
  slotDate?: string;
  slotTime?: string;

  // Simple counters
  bookingsCount?: number;
}

Every session starts from initial():

initial: () => ({
  step: "idle",
  bookingsCount: 0,
})

Harness isolation

The test harness creates a fresh bot per spec via makeBot(). Each bot gets its own MemorySessionStorage:

Spec 1 ("booking flow"):
  makeBot() → fresh MemorySessionStorage → session starts from initial()

Spec 2 ("cancel flow"):
  makeBot() → another fresh MemorySessionStorage → session starts from initial()

• No session leaks between specs
• No cleanup needed between runs
• Each spec sees exactly the state initial() defines

SQLite in production

For production bots, swap to SQLite (same StorageAdapter interface, same bot code):

import { SqliteSessionStorage } from "../src/toolkit/storage/sqlite.js"; // planned

const bot = createBot<Session>(token, {
  initial: () => ({ step: "idle" }),
  storage: new SqliteSessionStorage("./data/sessions.db"),
});

Until the toolkit ships SQLite adapter, use grammY's @grammyjs/storage-sqlite directly — same interface.

Migration

Adding fields to session:

// V1
interface Session { step: string; }

// V2 — add optional field (safe, no migration needed)
interface Session {
  step: string;
  theme?: "light" | "dark";  // optional — defaults to undefined
}

// Access with default:
const theme = ctx.session.theme ?? "light";

• MemoryStorage: restarts wipe everything — no migration needed
• SQLite: optional fields safe to add. Required new fields need migration step that fills defaults for existing rows

Quick Reference

Common mistakes

1. Storing non-serializable data — no functions, no class instances. Plain objects only.
2. Not initializing fields in initial() — missing fields are undefined, not defaults.
3. Relying on session across restarts (MemoryStorage) — ephemeral. Design flows restart-safe.
4. Session is per-chat, not per-user — same user in different chats = different sessions.
5. Session key = chatId_userId string — don't confuse with chat.id alone.