A Telegram Inventory Bot for Crickstore

The situation

No two cricket bats are the same. Weight, grains, edge thickness and grade vary from piece to piece, and a serious buyer wants to see the actual bat, not a catalogue photo.

Counting stock as “12 units of this model” could not answer the question customers ask: which bats do you have that suit me?

What we have built

A Telegram bot for store staff, backed by a web admin panel. Staff already work on their phones, so stock is recorded where they are.

• Individual identity: each bat gets a permanent record made of its product code, batch and item number, and duplicates are blocked.
• Guided photos: the bot asks for seven views in turn - front, back, grains, both edges, toe and handle - plus a video.
• AI suggestions: a vision model reads the photos and suggests weight, grains, edge size, serial number and grade. Staff confirm or correct them.
• Locations: a bat can be moved between stores with its history kept, and its identity never changes.
• Copilot: staff can ask the bot about stock in plain language, and any stock adjustment needs a second confirmation.
• Purchase invoices: supplier invoice PDFs are read with AI and the items taken into stock.

Control

Only approved Telegram users can use the bot, with staff, manager and admin roles. Every change is written to an audit log with who made it, when, and the value before and after.

What comes next

The staff side is deployed and still being extended. The next phase is the customer side: a WhatsApp sales agent that takes a buyer’s requirement in plain language, shows matching bats with their real photos and specifications, and reserves the one they choose.