1# EscarBot
 2
 3[Earthbound Café](https://linktr.ee/earthboundcafe)'s custom delivery bot with other cool utilities built-in.
 4
 5## Features
 61. The bot's main feature is listening for posts in a channel and forwarding them to a group.
 72. If the bot receives a private message, it will be forwarded to the bot's admin.
 83. If the bot senses an Instagram, Twitter (X) or YouTube link, it will try to send a custom link with better thumbnail generation.
 9
10## How to use
11Copy the `.env.example` file into `.env` and insert the following info:
12* `token`: your Telegram Bot Token;
13* `channel_id`: the channel the bot will listen to;
14* `group_id`: the group that will receive the channel messages;
15* `admin_id`: the user that will receive the bot's private messages.
16
17### With poetry
181. Install dependencies: `poetry install`;
192. Start the bot: `poetry run python escarbot`.
20
21### With virtualenv
22Create a new virtual environment and install required packages:
23```
24python -m virtualenv venv
25source venv/bin/activate
26pip install -r requirements.txt
27```
28
29Then, start the bot: `python main.py`.