tgcli

Read-only Telegram CLI for agent consumption. Authenticates as your personal Telegram account via MTProto and provides structured output optimized for LLM token efficiency.

Install

npm install -g @notxcain/tgcli

Setup

1. Get API credentials from https://my.telegram.org/auth
2. Authenticate:

tgcli auth

Session is saved to ~/.tgcli/session (mode 0600). Config saved to ~/.tgcli/config.json.

Output formats

All commands output TOON (Token-Oriented Object Notation) by default — a compact format that reduces token usage by 30-60% vs JSON for arrays of objects. Use global flags to switch format:

| Flag | Format | |------|--------| | (default) | TOON | | --json | JSON (pretty-printed) | | --plain | Human-readable plain text | | --format <fmt> | Explicit: toon, json, or plain |

Commands

auth

Authenticate with your Telegram account (interactive).

tgcli auth

folders

List all chat folders.

tgcli folders
tgcli folders --json

search

Search dialogs by name, or list chats in a folder.

tgcli search "Tech"
tgcli search --folder 248
tgcli search "Mom" --folder 248

Options: --folder <id>, --limit <n> (default: 20)

active

List chats with recent activity.

tgcli active
tgcli active --days 3

Options: --days <n> (default: 5), --limit <n> (default: 50)

info

Get chat metadata.

tgcli info "123456789"
tgcli info "123456789" --json

read

Read messages from a chat.

tgcli read "123456789" --limit 10
tgcli read "123456789" --after 2026-02-20
tgcli read "123456789" --before 2026-02-22 --after 2026-02-20

Options: --limit <n> (default: 50), --before <date>, --after <date>

download

Download media from a message.

tgcli download "123456789" 4522
tgcli download "123456789" 4522 --out-dir /tmp

Options: --out-dir <path> (default: .)

Workflow

tgcli folders          # find folder ID
tgcli search --folder 58   # list chats in folder
tgcli read "-100123"   # read messages
tgcli download "-100123" 42  # download media

Security

• Session file has full account access (same as Telegram Desktop)
• CLI is read-only by design (no send/delete/modify operations)
• Session stored with 0600 permissions
• No data leaves your machine