Build a Telegram Mini App with AI, from zero: no code, one small step at a time

Open Mini Agent and start a chat

Mini Agent is the AI builder inside Mini Empire. Connect a bot (paste its BotFather token, or let Mini Empire create one for you), choose the Build with AI card, the recommended one, and finish with Start building with AI. You land in an empty chat that asks what you are building. Mini Agent also has its own bot in Telegram, with the same bots, chats and credits. New accounts start with 100 free AI credits.

Ask for one small thing, and only that

This is the whole method in one sentence: ask for ONE specific change, check it live, fix it if needed, then move on. Do not describe the finished product. Start with the smallest slice that already looks like an app, such as “a home screen for my coffee shop with a loyalty card of 10 empty stamp slots”. Small requests come back faster, are easy to check and spend fewer credits.

If you catch yourself typing “and also…”, stop. That second idea is your next message.

Give every task its own chat

Each bot can have many chats, and each chat is a separate conversation with the AI. Use one per task: the look of the home screen, the prizes admin, the texts. A short, focused chat keeps the AI from mixing things up. When a chat gets long, Mini Agent itself suggests a new one: it is cheaper and more accurate, and it sees the app exactly as it is now. Tap ＋ at the end of the tabs, or the pen icon at the top.

Show it how the app should look

Build the look first and the function later. If you can picture the app, make a few screens with another AI: ask ChatGPT or Gemini for something like “three phone screens, dark theme, for a coffee-shop loyalty app: home with a stamp card, prizes, profile”. Then tap the paperclip, attach the images and say what to do with them: “Use these as the design. Build only the home screen for now.” Mini Agent reads the pictures and designs from them.

References steer the style; they are not copied pixel for pixel. Expect a close cousin, then fix the differences one at a time.

Bring your own artwork

Mini Agent draws with vectors and CSS, so icons, shapes, gradients and simple illustrations come out crisp. It cannot paint photographs or realistic 3D art. For that, make the pieces (a stamp icon, a card background, a mascot) in ChatGPT or Gemini and bring them in. Ask for an admin screen with an upload button, such as “Add an admin screen where I can upload the stamp icon and the card background, and use them in the app”, or attach the picture in the chat and ask Mini Agent to use it. Uploaded images are stored by the platform: PNG, JPEG, WebP or GIF, up to 3 MB each.

Ask for “realistic” or “photo-like” art and Mini Agent will tell you it cannot. Save the credits and bring the picture.

Open the app and check every change

After each answer, look at the app before asking for more. When the top bar says “changes not published”, a Publish bar appears: while the app has no users yet, publishing early is safe, it is one tap and it costs no credits. Then tap the green ▶ (Open your bot), press the Open button in the chat and look at the app on your phone the way a user will. Something off? Say exactly what: “The stamp circles are too small and too close to the left edge.”

Give each part a function, one at a time

With the look settled, bring it to life one screen or one button per message: “Make the Redeem button work. It turns green when the card has 10 stamps and says how many are missing before that.” Describe what the person sees and what should happen; Mini Agent takes care of saving the data behind it. Then repeat the loop: check it in your bot, fix what is off, ask for the next piece.

A big request gets a plan first

Ask for a lot at once, say “build the whole loyalty app”, and Mini Agent does not start spending. It shows a plan card in plain words: what you get, how it looks and one estimate, such as “~70 credits · ~9 min”. Build it starts the work. Keep planning lets you type what to change in the plan. Nothing is built until you choose, and the build stops before it passes its spending cap.

Answer the quick questions, or keep the star

If the plan still has open questions, Build it asks them one per screen, as big cards, with a progress bar on top. Mini Agent has already marked its pick with a star, so if you are not sure, keep it and tap Next. Here it asks how people will use the bot: Mini app (its own screens) is the one for an app with tabs and lists. On the last question the button says Build it.

Watch it build, stage by stage

Once you confirm, the plan lives in a floating header with its progress, so you can keep working in other chats. Tap it to open the quest: a ring with the percentage, the stage in plain words (“Designing your screens”, “Bringing it to life”), credits used and minutes left. If it pauses because the spending cap was reached or credits ran out, Continue picks up where it stopped.

Build an admin panel for what you manage

For everything you will run, ask for its own admin screen in the same breath: “Add an admin screen to manage the prizes: add, edit and remove them. Only I should see it.” You change prizes, prices and texts from your phone instead of asking the AI each time, which is faster and safer, and members never see that area. Build one admin screen per message, exactly like the rest.

Work in several chats at the same time

As the app grows, give every task its own chat and let them work in parallel: one polishing the card, another building the prizes admin, a third rewriting the texts. A spinner on a tab means that chat is working; a dot means it finished while you were looking elsewhere, and the app tells you when it does. Up to three chats work at once, and chats that touch the same part of the app wait for their turn, so give each a different area.

Test, fix, repeat: show the problem

Testing is part of every step, not a chore for the end. When something looks wrong, or a flow breaks, do not write a long description. Take a screenshot of the app (or of the bot’s chat), tap the paperclip, attach it and add one line of what you expected: “The Buy button does nothing here. It should open the payment.” Mini Agent sees exactly what you see, so it fixes the right thing faster, and usually for fewer credits, than a long explanation would. Then open the app and check again.

Circle or point at the problem in the screenshot if you can, and keep to one problem per message.

Undo for free when a fix goes wrong

If a change makes things worse, the clock icon in the top bar opens your draft: Undo last change, Publish, or go back to any earlier version. None of those buttons uses the AI, so none costs credits, and restoring a version never deletes the others. That safety net is what makes small, fast experiments cheap.

Publish with one tap

When the app does what you want, tap Publish. A centered window walks through the checks: the bot is reviewed for problems, the mini app is opened and tested on a phone-sized screen, and only then does it go live. If a check finds a problem, a list explains it and Ask the AI to fix it sends it straight to Mini Agent. Nothing reaches your users until every check passes.

You are live

The window turns into a celebration: “You are live! Version 7 is now what your users get.” Your bot’s /start now carries an Open button that launches the mini app. Tap Open your bot and run through it once more, ideally from a second Telegram account and in both light and dark mode.

Open it like a member would, then keep the loop going

This is what your users see: the home screen you designed, with data that is theirs. From here the method does not change. New idea? New chat, one small change, check it in your bot, publish. The admin screens you built let you run the app day to day, and every addition goes through the same loop: ask, check, fix, next.