💬 Create a voice & text Telegram assistant with Lookio RAG and GPT-4.1
⚡ 287 views · 💬 Support Chatbots
Description
Create a Telegram bot that answers questions using Retrieval-Augmented Generation (RAG) powered by Lookio and an LLM agent (GPT-4.1).
This template handles both text and voice messages (voice transcribed via a Mistral model by default), routes queries through an agent that can call a Lookio tool to fetch knowledge from your uploaded documents, and returns concise, Telegram-friendly replies. A security switch lets you restrict use to a single Telegram username for private testing, or remove the filter to make the bot public.
Who is this for?
- Internal teams & knowledge workers: Turn your internal docs into an interactive Telegram assistant for quick knowledge lookups.
- Support & ops: Provide on-demand answers from your internal knowledge base without exposing full documentation.
- Developers & automation engineers: Use this as a reference for integrating agents, transcription, and RAG inside n8n.
- No-code builders: Quickly deploy a chat interface that uses Lookio for accurate, source-backed answers.
What it does / What problem does this solve?
- Provides accurate, source-backed answers: Routes queries to Lookio so replies are grounded in your documents instead of generic web knowledge.
- Handles voice & text transparently: Accepts Telegram voice messages, transcribes them (via the Mistral API node by default), and treats transcripts the same as typed text.
- Simple agent + tool architecture: Uses a LangChain AI Agent with a Query knowledge base tool to separate reasoning from retrieval.
- Privacy control: Includes a Myself? filter to restrict access to a specific Telegram username for safe testing.
How it works
- Trigger: Telegram Trigger receives incoming messages (text or voice).
- Route: Message Router detects voice vs text. Voice files are fetched with Get Audio File.
- Transcribe: Mistral transcribe receives the audio file and returns a transcript; the transcript or text is normalized into preset_user_message and consolidated in Consolidate user message.
- Agent: AI Agent (GPT-4.1-mini configured) runs with a system prompt that instructs it to call the Query knowledge base tool when domain knowledge is required.
- Respond: The agent output is sent back to the user via Telegram answer.
How to set up
- Create a Lookio assistant: Sign up to Lookio, the API-first RAG platform, upload documents, and create an assistant.
- Add credentials in n8n: Configure Telegram API, OpenAI (or your LLM provider), and Mistral Cloud credentials in n8n.
- Configure Lookio tool: In the Query knowledge base node, replace
<your-lookio-api-key>and<your-assistant-id>placeholders with your Lookio API Key and Assistant ID. - Set Telegram privacy (optional): Edit the Myself? If node and replace
<Replace with your Telegram username>with your username to restrict access. Remove the node to allow public use. - Adjust transcription (optional): Swap the Mistral transcribe HTTP node for another provider (OpenAI, Whisper, etc.) and update its prompt to include your jargon list.
- Connect LLM: In OpenAI Chat Model node, add your OpenAI API key (or configure another LLM node) and ensure the AI Agent node references this model.
- Activate workflow: Activate the workflow and test by messaging your bot in Telegram.
Requirements
- An n8n instance (cloud or self-hosted)
- A Telegram Bot token added in n8n credentials
- A Lookio account, API Key, and Assistant ID
- An LLM provider account (OpenAI or equivalent) for the OpenAI Chat Model node
- A Mistral API key (or other transcription provider) for voice transcription
How to take it further
- Add provenance & sources: Parse Lookio responses and include short citations or source links in the agent replies.
- Rich replies: Use Telegram media (images, files) or inline keyboards to create follow-up actions (open docs, request feedback, escalate to humans).
- Multi-user access control: Replace the single-username filter with a list or role-based access system (Airtable or Google Sheets lookup) to allow multiple trusted users.
- Logging & analytics: Save queries and agent responses to Airtable or Google Sheets for monitoring, quality checks, and prompt improvement.
🔗 Nodes Used
HTTP Request, Telegram, Telegram Trigger, AI Agent, OpenAI Chat Model, Simple Memory
📥 Import
Download workflow.json and import into n8n:
Workflow menu → Import from File