The latest articles on DEV Community by aaamosh (@aaamosh). https://dev.to/aaamosh https://media2.dev.to/dynamic/image/width=90,height=90,fit=cover,gravity=auto,format=auto/https:%2F%2Fdev-to-uploads.s3.us-east-2.amazonaws.com%2Fuploads%2Fuser%2Fprofile_image%2F3989834%2Fe049eac7-87c2-4f58-a92a-ef9e554b960d.png https://dev.to/aaamosh en aaamosh Wed, 17 Jun 2026 22:07:32 +0000 https://dev.to/aaamosh/i-built-an-open-source-telegram-bot-for-the-openai-codex-referral-promo-53lm https://dev.to/aaamosh/i-built-an-open-source-telegram-bot-for-the-openai-codex-referral-promo-53lm <p>OpenAI dropped Codex referral links on June 12. Seven days of free Codex Pro for you, seven days for a friend. The catch? Each referral code can only be used once. Post your link on social media and the first person to click it claims it — everyone else gets "this referral has already been used." One shot, gone.</p> <p>That's a poor user experience. And it's wasteful: every unused referral is a missed opportunity for someone who actually wants to try Codex.</p> <p>So I built <strong>@codexHuddbot</strong> — a Telegram bot that solves the one-shot matching problem.</p> <h2> How it works </h2> <p>A user sends their Codex referral link to the bot. The bot stores it in a queue. When another user asks for a referral, the bot dequeues the oldest link, marks it as claimed, and sends it privately. No public link dumps. No race conditions. No wasted referrals. One-to-one matching, on demand.</p> <p>The bot handles duplicates (you can't submit the same link twice), tracks which links have been consumed, and provides a <code>/status</code> command.</p> <h2> Architecture: boring tech, fast delivery </h2> <p>I wanted something that could ship in an afternoon and run reliably for the two-week promo window.</p> <ul> <li> <strong>buddy-server</strong>: A ~500-line Python aiohttp server on a VPS behind nginx with a self-signed certificate. REST API for submitting and claiming referrals, backed by SQLite. No ORM, no migrations, no Docker — just <code>pip install aiohttp</code> and <code>systemctl start codex-buddy</code>. This is the live, running component.</li> <li> <strong>buddy-bot</strong>: A Cloudflare Worker (free tier) planned to proxy between Telegram's Bot API and the buddy-server — keeping the server's IP hidden and handling webhook requirements. Currently the bot uses Telegram polling directly; the Worker is the next step.</li> <li> <strong>codex-reset</strong>: A companion CLI that consumes "banked" rate-limit reset credits via the OpenAI Codex <code>wham/rate-limit-reset-credits/consume</code> endpoint. For Linux and headless users who never see the in-editor popup — they'd otherwise leave those credits unused.</li> </ul> <p>~500 lines of application code. Two repos, MIT-licensed.</p> <h2> Why open source? </h2> <p>The promo ends June 24. After that, the bot's core function retires. But the architecture — a lightweight Python aiohttp server behind nginx, backed by SQLite — is reusable for any time-limited Telegram bot. The code is clean enough to serve as a reference, and the referral-matching logic is a simple queue pattern you can adapt.</p> <h2> Try it </h2> <ul> <li> <strong>Telegram bot</strong>: <a href="https://t.me/codexHuddbot" rel="noopener noreferrer">@codexHuddbot</a> </li> <li> <strong>codex-hud repo</strong>: <a href="https://github.com/aaamosh/codex-hud" rel="noopener noreferrer">github.com/aaamosh/codex-hud</a> </li> <li> <strong>codex-reset repo</strong>: <a href="https://github.com/aaamosh/codex-reset" rel="noopener noreferrer">github.com/aaamosh/codex-reset</a> </li> </ul> <p>Both MIT-licensed. Stars, issues, and PRs welcome. The promo ends June 24 — if you've got an unused referral link, now's the time to share it.</p> codex telegram opensource python