tgcli

Telegram CLI with background sync and an optional MCP server for your personal account (MTProto, not bot API).

Installation

npm install -g @kfastov/tgcli

brew install kfastov/tap/tgcli

Related MCP server: telegram-mcp

Authentication

Get Telegram API credentials:

1. Go to https://my.telegram.org/apps

2. Log in with your phone number

3. Create a new application

4. Copy api_id and api_hash

Then authenticate:

tgcli auth

Quick start

tgcli auth
tgcli sync --follow
tgcli messages list --chat @username --limit 20
tgcli messages search "course" --chat @channel --source archive
tgcli send text --to @username --message "hello"
tgcli server

Commands

tgcli auth           Authentication and session setup
tgcli config         View and edit config
tgcli sync           Archive backfill and realtime sync
tgcli server         Run background sync service (MCP optional); stop, restart, logs
tgcli service        Install/start/stop/status/logs for background service
tgcli channels       List/search channels
tgcli messages       List/search messages
tgcli send           Send text or files
tgcli media          Download media
tgcli topics         Forum topics
tgcli tags           Channel tags
tgcli metadata       Channel metadata cache
tgcli contacts       Contacts and people
tgcli groups         Group management
tgcli doctor         Diagnostics and sanity checks

Commands run through tgcli server, which the CLI starts on demand. After an upgrade, the next command of any kind replaces a server the CLI started itself, as soon as its backfill queue is empty. A server you started yourself with tgcli server or tgcli service keeps running the old code until you restart it; the CLI warns about this on stderr. tgcli server restart restarts the server on the CLI's version, tgcli server stop stops it, and tgcli server logs --follow shows its log.

Use tgcli [command] --help for details. Add --json for machine-readable output.

Once a day tgcli checks npm for a newer release in the background and, at a terminal, prints one line on stderr with the upgrade command (brew update && brew upgrade tgcli or npm i -g @kfastov/tgcli). Set TGCLI_NO_UPDATE_CHECK=1 to turn it off; see docs/cli.md.

MCP (optional)

Enable it via config:

tgcli config set mcp.enabled true

By default the server binds to http://127.0.0.1:8080/mcp. To change it:

tgcli config set mcp.host 127.0.0.1
tgcli config set mcp.port 8080

Then run tgcli server and point your client at the configured address.

Configuration & Store

The tgcli store lives in the OS app-data directory and contains config.json, sessions, and messages.db. Override the location with TGCLI_STORE.

Legacy version: see MIGRATION.md.

Development

Run it from a clone with Node 22: npm ci, then node cli.js. See docs/development.md for tests and for trying a change on your own account.