A daily planner bot: the first version
  • Telegram
  • Node.js
  • Docker
  • Bot

A daily planner bot: the first version

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Today I wrote a Telegram bot for myself. The goal is simple: keep a daily plan and remind me when the time comes. At first I stored tasks as a plain list. It quickly became clear that this was not enough — "morning workout" and "evening reading" are not the same kind of thing. I also needed to know how long each one takes, otherwise they would overlap during the day. So I added a duration to every task. Now the bot knows not only what has to be done but also how much time it takes. That single field made the plan far more realistic. Then I added commands: today's list, tomorrow, and yesterday. I did not expect yesterday to be needed, but in practice it turned out to be the most used one — the question "what did I do yesterday?" comes up every single day. At the end of the day I put the bot inside Docker. I could have postponed that, but experience says otherwise: "I will deploy it later" usually stretches into two weeks, and by then the project has grown much more complicated. Now it starts with one command. For now the bot only runs for me. That is how it should be — do not hand other people something you do not use yourself every day.