Paid add-on · no server needed

HERON Bot

HERON Bot is a Telegram bot that keeps an eye on your HERON sites and updates them, without a server of your own to set up. Connect your sites, and the alerts, the release reports and the update buttons come to one chat.

It is a paid add-on by subscription. With a server of your own, HERON Agent does the same job there, with your own bot or ours.

What the Bot does

Watches your sites

Every site you connect is checked around the clock. You learn that a site is down from a message, not from a customer.

Uptime: A site stops answering, or comes back.
Certificates: An SSL certificate is about to expire, days before it does.
Answer codes: The home page, the 404 and the redirects answer as they should.
Any hosting: GitHub Pages, Cloudflare Pages, a container service or your own server.

Reports every release

After every git push you learn how the release went, without opening GitHub.

Build: GitHub built and checked the site, or stopped on an error, with the file and the line.
Live: The new version is online, or the old one kept working.
Changes: Which pages were added or changed.
What to do: When a build stops, the message names the file to open and the field to fix.

Updates where the site lives

Where your site is hosted decides what the Bot can do. It never asks you to move the site.

Static hosting: GitHub Pages and Cloudflare Pages update on every push; the Bot reports the result.
Container hosting: Services that run your image, such as Google Cloud Run, get the new image by the Bot's button.
Your server: Connect the Agent, and the Bot becomes its control panel.
Not now: Postpone an update for an hour, a day or a week with one tap.

One chat for every site

All your sites, from every hosting, in one list. Useful from the second site on.

Add a site: Send its address and the repository; the Bot asks for the keys it needs.
For teams: Give a colleague access to the chat, or only to one site.
Overview: One message lists every site with its state and last release.
Remove: Delete a site from the list, and its keys go with it.

How to connect

1

Open the bot in Telegram and start a subscription.
2
Add a site

its address and its GitHub repository or Docker Hub image.
3
Give a read-only key

a GitHub token with read access to packages and Actions, or a Docker Hub token. The Bot never needs write access to your code.
4
Done

Alerts and release reports come to the chat; updates go by a button.

What you see in Telegram

A release

«my-site.com: build passed in 41 s, 2 pages changed. The site is updated.»

A stopped build

«Build stopped: content/en/implants.md, line 4 — empty description. The live site did not change.»

Alerts

A site is down or back, a certificate expires in 7 days.

Commands

List sites, add a site, update now, postpone, mute alerts for a while.

Safety

Read-only keys

The Bot reads your images and build results; it cannot change your repository.

Your data stays yours

The keys are stored encrypted in your account and used only for your sites.

Remove at any time

Delete a site from the Bot, and its keys are deleted with it. Revoke the token on GitHub or Docker Hub, and access ends at once.

Questions

How is the Bot different from the Agent?

The Agent runs on your server and updates the containers there. The Bot needs no server of yours: it watches and reports for any hosting, and becomes the Agent's control panel when you have one.

How much does it cost?

The Bot is a paid add-on by subscription. Prices will be published with its release.

Can I use my own bot instead?

Yes, with the Agent on your own server: create a bot with @BotFather and give its key to the Agent.

Do I need it for a free GitHub Pages site?

No. GitHub Pages updates on every push by itself. The Bot adds alerts and release reports in Telegram.