Megu: moderation bot for your group

A group chat grows, spammers show up, and the one admin can't sit on their phone all day. Megu takes over the routine of moderation and adds some entertainment to the group. The bot speaks Spanish, which is worth knowing before you add it.

Its profile describes it as a bot for moderation and entertainment. Updates are posted in a separate announcement channel that the profile points to.

The admin toolkit

Megu comes with the familiar set of moderation commands. You send them as a reply to the offender's message or name the user directly.

• /warn gives a warning. Good for a first offense, when a ban would be too harsh.
• /mute takes away a member's right to write until an admin changes their mind.
• /ban and /unban remove a person from the group and let them back in.
• /exploit kicks a user out of the chat. /exploitme does the same to you, so don't send it as a joke.
• /admins and /info list the group's admins and show details about a user.

A ladder of warning, mute, ban works better than going straight to harsh measures. Members learn the rules and take offense less often.

Triggers: let the bot answer for you

The same questions come up every week: where are the rules, how do I join, what's today's schedule. A trigger turns the answer into a canned reaction to a keyword.

1. Send /settrigger and set the word or phrase the bot should react to.
2. Give it the reply it should post in the chat.
3. Check the full list with /triggers.
4. Remove anything you no longer need with /deltrigger.

Don't create dozens of triggers on common words. If the bot answers every second message, members start ignoring it and the chat turns into noise.

Stickers, image lookups and anime

The fun half of the bot revolves around media. The /steal command copies stickers into a personal pack, and /reverse runs a reverse image search, handy when you want the source of artwork or a meme.

With /whatanime you can find an anime title from a screenshot or a short clip. There is also /lastfm, which shows what you're listening to if you have a music scrobbling account connected.

Copy only what you're allowed to. Other people's sticker sets shouldn't be repackaged and passed off as your own. 🎨

Adding it to your group

Most group bots work only with admin rights, and Megu is no exception. Without them it can't delete a message or restrict a troublemaker.

1. Open the group settings and choose to add an administrator.
2. Find the bot by name and promote it to admin.
3. Grant the rights moderation needs: deleting messages, banning and restricting members.
4. Send /start and look at the command help.

Skip permissions you don't need. If you won't pin messages or edit the group description, leave those boxes unchecked. 🔒

Things to keep in mind

Commands and hints arrive in Spanish. If you don't read it, learning the dozen commands above is enough, and Telegram's built-in translator can handle the rest.

This is a third-party project, and any moderation bot can read the messages in your group. Before handing over rights, tell members that a bot is running in the chat and check what data it can access.

For public chats, write the rules in advance and pin them. The bot runs commands, but the decisions about punishment stay with the admins. 🛡️