Daily vegan recipes sent to Telegram subscribers

Daily vegan recipes sent to Telegram subscribers

An n8n workflow for a small Telegram recipe bot. Whoever writes to the bot is saved as a subscriber in an Airtable table and gets a welcome message and a first vegan recipe at once. After that, every day, each subscriber gets a new random vegan recipe with its photo, its title and a link. Fifteen nodes do the work, in two flows.

What is inside

• workflow.json: the workflow as n8n exports it, 15 nodes beside 2 sticky notes. It holds no credential.
• README.md: these notes.

What we changed from the original copy

Mindket repaired and tidied the copy so it can run today:

• The three Airtable nodes were n8n's Airtable node at version 1, which signs in with an Airtable API key by default. Airtable retired API keys, so Mindket rebuilt them as the node at version 2.2, which uses a personal access token or OAuth2. The base and table are now the placeholders <YOUR_AIRTABLE_BASE_ID> and <YOUR_AIRTABLE_TABLE_ID>.
• The check for a new subscriber could never work. It listed the whole table, then compared two values that are never equal, so an empty table added nobody and a full table added the same person again and again. Mindket's copy asks Airtable for the row with the sender's chat id, and adds a row only when none comes back.
• The schedule was n8n's Cron node, which n8n now hides from its node list. Mindket's copy uses the Schedule Trigger at the same time, every day at 14:00.
• The recipe request used tags=vegan. The spoonacular documentation read on 12 November 2026 lists include-tags for random recipes, so the request now uses it. The API key in the address is now <YOUR_SPOONACULAR_API_KEY>.
• Two sticky notes are new, and the nodes have clearer names.
• No credential is inside.

Before you start

• An n8n instance, on n8n Cloud or your own server.
• A Telegram bot made with @BotFather.
• A spoonacular API key. Its Free plan gives 50 points a day.
• An Airtable base with a table that has two fields: chatid, a Number field, and Name, a text field. You also need an Airtable personal access token that can read and write that base.

Set it up

1. In n8n, create a workflow, open its menu and choose Import from File. Pick workflow.json.
2. Add a Telegram credential with your bot token and select it in the Telegram nodes and in the trigger.
3. Add an Airtable credential with your token and select it in List subscribers, Find subscriber and Add subscriber. In each of them, pick your base and your table in place of the two placeholders.
4. In Get recipes from API and in Get recipes, replace <YOUR_SPOONACULAR_API_KEY> in the address with your key.
5. Publish the workflow, then write to your bot and check that you get a recipe and that a row appears in Airtable.

How a run goes

The daily flow:

1. Every day starts a run at 14:00 in the time zone of your n8n.
2. List subscribers reads every row of the table, and Set chat id keeps the chatid of each as a number.
3. Get recipes from API asks spoonacular for one random recipe tagged vegan, once for each subscriber.
4. Recipe Photo sends the recipe's image, and Recipe URL sends its title and its source link.

The flow for a new message:

1. Telegram Trigger - people join bot starts when someone writes to the bot.
2. Find subscriber asks Airtable for the row whose chatid equals the sender's chat id. It outputs an empty item when there is none.
3. New subscriber? passes only an item with no id. Set chat id and name takes the chat id and the first name, and Add subscriber creates the row.
4. In parallel, Telegram Welcome Message greets the sender, Get recipes fetches a recipe, and Telegram Recipe Image and Telegram Recipe URL send it.

Change the look

• The time: the options of Every day.
• The kind of recipe: include-tags in the two addresses, such as vegetarian or dessert. The same page lists exclude-tags.
• The welcome text: Telegram Welcome Message.
• The storage: swap the three Airtable nodes for another table or sheet.

Good to know

• Make chatid a Number field, as the file does. The check asks Airtable for {chatid} = <number>, and a text field may not match that.
• Every message to the bot, from a new person or an old one, sends a welcome and a recipe. Each recipe call costs spoonacular 1 point and 0.01 points more for each recipe, on a Free plan of 50 points a day with one request a second.
• The spoonacular terms ask you not to copy or store its data, and its pricing page lists a backlink for the Free plan. The workflow stores only the chat id and the first name, in your own Airtable.
• Anyone can write to a public bot and be added. The table holds a chat id and a first name for each person, so tell your subscribers and delete a row when someone asks.
• The Airtable steps follow n8n's source for the version 2.2 node, and Mindket did not run them or the recipe request. Check the first run by hand.
• The JSON holds no credential.