Tap-to-RSVP game cards
A card in the group chat with Join, Maybe and Out buttons. It edits itself in place as people answer, so the chat shows one live card instead of forty replies.
In production Telegram Mini App
Automaton Clubs
Fixtures, RSVPs, waitlists and reminders for clubs and teams — run from the group chat everyone is already in.
The problem
Organising a club through a group chat means the same questions every week: who is in, where is it, what time. The answers scroll away, half the team misses the reminder, and someone keeps the register in their head.
What we built
Automaton Clubs posts a game card into the group with Join, Maybe and Out buttons that update in place. RSVPs, waitlists, members and results live in Postgres; reminders go out on schedule and are never sent twice; and every member can subscribe to the fixtures from their own calendar app.
Capabilities
What it actually does
Every item below is a feature of the running system, not a roadmap.
Waitlists that run themselves
Capped games fill in order. When someone drops out, the first person on the waitlist is promoted automatically — no admin arithmetic.
Reminders that never double-ping
Day-before and starting-soon reminders, deduplicated by a database constraint, so even a re-run cannot spam the group.
Fixtures in your own calendar
Every member gets a personal calendar feed — subscribe once in Google or Apple Calendar and the club's fixtures stay in sync by themselves.
Members by approval
Join requests queue for an admin decision, and admins are nudged until they deal with them. The bot itself can only post where it has been allowed to, and every send is audited.
League scoring built in
Seasons, fixtures and match results with validation and recomputation, so the table is always consistent with the games actually recorded.
Under the hood
How it is put together
Nothing exotic. A mini app talking to an action-routed API, with state in Postgres and authorisation checked server-side on every call.
- Runs on your server, against your database, with your credentials
- No per-seat licence and no vendor account required
- Documented at handover, so someone else could take it over
| Front end | Telegram Mini App + live group cards |
|---|---|
| Logic | Postgres functions — the database is the application |
| Auth | Telegram identity, HMAC verified in Postgres |
| Messaging | One audited send gate, allow-listed chats |
| Reminders | Scheduled, deduplicated by unique index |
| Calendar | Per-member iCalendar feed |
| Deploys | App shell versioned in the DB; rollback is one repost |
Fit
Who this suits
- Darts, pool and pub sports teams
- Social clubs that organise everything in a group chat
- Anyone counting who is in by scrolling
Tell us what keeps going wrong
A conversation costs nothing and often ends with us saying automation is not worth it for a given job. That is a useful answer too.