{
  "id": 13888495,
  "title": "TouchGrass FC: a Telegram bot whose only goal is to make you close Telegram",
  "url": "https://urgent.news/2026/10/12/touchgrass-fc-a-telegram-bot-whose-only-goal-is-to-make-you-close",
  "topic": "tech",
  "section": "Tech",
  "published": "2026-10-12T06:05:27.000Z",
  "source": {
    "name": "Dev.to",
    "slug": "dev-to",
    "url": "https://dev.to/ptbdtq/touchgrass-fc-a-telegram-bot-whose-only-goal-is-to-make-you-close-telegram-43lp"
  },
  "original_language": "en",
  "account": "TouchGrass FC is a Telegram group bot designed to simplify the process of organizing pickup football matches among friends. Instead of dealing with a flurry of messages asking \"when can we all play?\" and \"what time works for everyone?\", the bot streamlines the conversation into a single poll, asking participants to indicate their availability.\n\nOnce the bot receives the replies, it uses a local Gemma model to convert the chat replies into a structured format, checking the weather forecast and filtering out any time slots that fall after sunset. The bot then selects the best available slot, finds the nearest pitch on OpenStreetMap, and posts a poll with a map pin to the Telegram group.\n\nAfter the match, the bot sends a reminder three hours prior to the kickoff and asks participants if they actually played. The main metric of success is the number of actual matches played, displayed via the /stats command. The bot uses only one message and one tap from each player, minimizing the required interaction. The only metric reported is the total matches played.",
  "summary": "This is a submission for the Hacktoberfest Open-Source AI Challenge Week 1: Touch Grass What I Built Every pickup football group has the same thread. \"Saturday?\" \"Maybe.\" \"What time?\" \"After work.\" \"Which Saturday?\" Twenty messages later, nobody has committed and nobody has played. TouchGrass FC is a Telegram group bot that replaces that thread with one question and one poll. Someone types /play…",
  "key_points": [
    "TouchGrass FC simplifies organizing football matches among friends via Telegram bot.",
    "Bot uses poll to ask participants' availability and selects best time slot.",
    "After match, bot reminds participants and tracks number of actual matches played."
  ],
  "editors_take": null,
  "illustration": null,
  "coverage": {
    "outlets": 1,
    "also_reported_by": []
  },
  "ai_generated": true,
  "disclaimer": "Summaries, key points and the editor’s take are written by software from other outlets’ reporting and may contain errors — always check the linked original."
}