tg

tg tool allows you to interact with a Telegram bot to send messages, get bot information, and list channels configured in your configuration file. I use it to keep my quick notes.

nix build

Usage

Commands

Server

Start a background server that continuously syncs messages from configured forum groups:

tg server                    # default 1m pull interval
tg server --pull-interval 5m # custom interval

The server:

• Discovers all topics in configured forum groups at startup
• Pulls message history via MTProto
• Syncs new messages on the configured interval
• Creates markdown files in ~/.local/share/tg/<group_name>/

Note: New topics created after server start won't appear until restart.

Pull

One-shot pull of messages from all configured forum groups:

tg pull

Open

Open a topic file in $EDITOR (uses fzf for pattern matching):

tg open           # fzf over all topics
tg open journal   # open if unique match, else fzf

Send

Send a message to a topic:

tg send journal "Today I'm feeling blue"
tg send -g 2244305221 -t 7 "direct by IDs"

List

List all discovered topics:

tg list

Todos

Aggregate TODOs from all topic files:

tg todos

Bot Info

Retrieve information about the bot:

tg bot-info

Configuration

Create a configuration file at ~/.config/tg.toml:

localhost_port = 59753
max_messages_per_chat = 1000

# MTProto credentials (required for pull/server)
# Get these from https://my.telegram.org/
api_id = 12345
api_hash = "your_api_hash"  # or use TELEGRAM_API_HASH env var
phone = "+1234567890"       # or use PHONE_NUMBER_FR env var
username = "@yourusername"  # for session file naming

[groups]
personal = "-1002244305221"        # forum group
work = "-1002244305221/3"          # specific topic in group

Groups are specified by chat ID (with -100 prefix for supergroups). Append /topic_id to target a specific topic.

Example config: ./examples/config.toml

Environment Variables

export TELEGRAM_MAIN_BOT_TOKEN="your_bot_token"  # for send/bot-info
export TELEGRAM_API_HASH="your_api_hash"         # alternative to config
export PHONE_NUMBER_FR="+1234567890"             # alternative to config

License