Telegram bot onboarding for self-service community registration

[zhiganov]

Problem

Community organizers can't connect their Telegram groups to the Citizen Infrastructure ecosystem (scenius-digest, Avails, my-community) without asking the platform operator to manually edit config files.

What's needed

A shared Telegram bot (currently @avails_chatbot, may need a unified ecosystem bot) that:

1. Detects when added to a group — responds with setup instructions
2. Discovers topics — /monitor-links, /monitor-events commands in topic threads to register them
3. Verifies admin — checks the user is a group admin via Telegram API
4. Activates community — /activate makes it live in the config API
5. Registers in community-admin database — stores group_id, output_channel, topics, city

Design

Already fully designed in docs/plans/shaping.md (V3 slice) and docs/plans/2026-02-08-self-service-onboarding-design.md (Telegram-first onboarding path).

Open question: shared bot vs per-project bots

Currently Avails has its own bot (@avails_chatbot) and scenius-digest has its own. Should community-admin have a unified ecosystem bot that handles:

• Community onboarding (this issue)
• Link collection (currently scenius-digest's job)
• Poll sharing (currently Avails' job)

Or should each project keep its own bot and community-admin just manages the config?

Related

• Expose GET /api/config endpoint for scenius-digest and Avails #9 (config API)
• Self-service community connection for share_poll avails#44 (self-service community connection)