I built a task manager inside Telegram — and censorship made me a better engineer

I got tired of switching between Telegram and our project management tool dozens of times a day. The team was already in Telegram — why wasn't the work? So I built iTasks: a full task tracker that runs as a Telegram Mini App. No install, no sign-up — just open the bot and start working. Kanban board, time tracking, file attachments, workflow automation, voice rooms for the team. Built on Node + React. Why Telegram specifically? Telegram is the closest thing we have to a truly independent platform. No predatory commissions, no arbitrary rule changes overnight, no app store gatekeeping. It's always in your pocket, and I genuinely believe it's becoming the global WeChat — a super-app that people live inside of. Building on Telegram felt like building on solid ground. Then reality hit I assumed the hard parts would be product decisions. I was wrong. The real challenge turned out to be digital geography . Problem #1: CDN blocked. I was using DigitalOcean Spaces for file attachments. Turns o