Arbling Telegram

A read-only MCP (Model Context Protocol) server that gives Claude Code, Cowork, and any other MCP client access to a curated set of Telegram groups via your own Telegram account (MTProto). It reads only the groups you explicitly list in a hand-edited YAML config — not your full Telegram history, not DMs, not unlisted groups. All data stays local on your machine.

Privacy

This server is read-only. It cannot send messages, join or leave groups, react, or delete anything. It never accesses your DMs or private conversations. It only reads the groups you explicitly add to curated-groups.yaml. Your Telegram session file stays on your machine — it is never transmitted or logged. Your phone number is masked in all output. There is no telemetry, analytics, or any outbound network traffic beyond the Telegram API itself.

5-step onboarding

# 1. Get Telegram API credentials (one-time, free)
#    Go to https://my.telegram.org → "API development tools"
#    Create an app, save api_id and api_hash to your password manager.

# 2. Install the package
pip install arbling-telegram-mcp
# or via uvx (no install needed):
# uvx arbling-telegram-mcp auth

# 3. Authenticate (one-time interactive — needs your phone for the SMS code)
TELEGRAM_API_ID=<your_id> TELEGRAM_API_HASH=<your_hash> arbling-telegram-mcp auth

# 4. Discover your groups and create the curated config
TELEGRAM_API_ID=<your_id> TELEGRAM_API_HASH=<your_hash> \
  arbling-telegram-mcp list-groups > ~/.arbling-telegram-mcp/curated-groups.yaml
# Edit the YAML: move groups you care about into tech_news / investor / tech_mentors
# Delete any groups you don't want the MCP to read.

# 5. Add to your MCP client config — see "Claude Code config" below

Claude Code config (~/.claude.json)

{
  "mcpServers": {
    "telegram": {
      "command": "arbling-telegram-mcp",
      "env": {
        "TELEGRAM_API_ID": "<your_id>",
        "TELEGRAM_API_HASH": "<your_hash>"
      }
    }
  }
}

Cowork / desktop config

Add the same block to your Cowork MCP settings (the mcpServers section in the app's settings JSON):

{
  "mcpServers": {
    "telegram": {
      "command": "arbling-telegram-mcp",
      "env": {
        "TELEGRAM_API_ID": "<your_id>",
        "TELEGRAM_API_HASH": "<your_hash>"
      }
    }
  }
}

Environment variables

Variable	Required	Default	Purpose
TELEGRAM_API_ID	Yes	—	Numeric API ID from https://my.telegram.org
TELEGRAM_API_HASH	Yes	—	API hash from https://my.telegram.org
TELEGRAM_SESSION_PATH	No	~/.arbling-telegram-mcp/session	Path to the Telethon .session file (without extension)
TELEGRAM_CURATED_GROUPS_PATH	No	~/.arbling-telegram-mcp/curated-groups.yaml	Path to your curated groups config
TELEGRAM_SESSION_STRING	Hosted only	—	Telethon StringSession (wins over the session file). See "Hosted deployment"
TELEGRAM_CURATED_GROUPS_B64	Hosted only	—	Base64-encoded curated-groups YAML (wins over the file path)
TELEGRAM_MCP_AUTH_TOKEN	Hosted only	—	Bearer token required by serve-http; the server refuses to start without it
TELEGRAM_MCP_DISABLED	No	—	Kill switch: any truthy value (1/true/yes/on) makes serve-http reject all tool calls with 503
PORT	No	8080	Listen port for serve-http (set by Railway automatically)

Tools

Tool	Description
telegram_status	Check connection + auth health. Call first in any session.
list_my_groups	List all groups/channels you're a member of (for discovery).
list_curated_groups	List groups from your curated-groups.yaml, optionally filtered by category.
read_recent_messages	Read recent messages from curated groups. Supports category filter, time window, single-group deep dive.
search_messages	Full-text search across curated groups with time window and category filter.
get_message_thread	Fetch a single message plus its reply thread.
refresh_session	Re-validate the session against Telegram (use when tools fail with auth errors).

curated-groups.yaml schema

# Each category holds a list of groups identified by numeric Telegram chat_id.
# 'name' is descriptive only — for human readability and log output.
# Numeric chat_id is more reliable than @username (names can change).

tech_news:
  - id: -1001234567890
    name: "MCP Developers"
  - id: -1002345678901
    name: "Indie Hackers UAE"

investor:
  - id: -1009876543210
    name: "Pre-seed Underground"
  - id: -1009999999999
    name: "MENA Angels"

tech_mentors:
  - id: -1003333333333
    name: "AI Native Founders"

The three categories (tech_news, investor, tech_mentors) are the convention. Empty arrays are allowed. Extra top-level categories are forward-compatible.

To get the numeric IDs: run arbling-telegram-mcp list-groups — it outputs a YAML template with all your groups commented out, ready to edit.

Hosted deployment (Railway)

The server can also run over HTTP for cloud callers (e.g. a daily-brief runner) via the serve-http subcommand — a stateless streamable-HTTP MCP endpoint at POST /mcp, protected by a mandatory bearer token. The repo ships a Dockerfile and railway.json (healthcheck on /health, restart ON_FAILURE), so deploying is: create a Railway service from this repo, set the variables below, done.

The read-only tool surface is identical to stdio mode — same 7 tools, no DMs, curated groups only.

Required variables on Railway

Variable	Purpose
TELEGRAM_API_ID / TELEGRAM_API_HASH	Same API credentials as local mode
TELEGRAM_SESSION_STRING	Your Telegram session as a Telethon StringSession — set it with the export helper below, never by hand in logs/chat
TELEGRAM_CURATED_GROUPS_B64	Your curated-groups.yaml, base64-encoded (e.g. base64 -w0 curated-groups.yaml)
TELEGRAM_MCP_AUTH_TOKEN	Bearer token clients must send; generate with openssl rand -hex 32. Fail closed: the server refuses to start if unset
TELEGRAM_MCP_DISABLED	Optional kill switch — set to 1 to instantly reject all tool traffic (503) without deleting the service

PORT is injected by Railway; RAILWAY_GIT_COMMIT_SHA is used by the health endpoint if present.

Exporting your session

Run on the machine where you did arbling-telegram-mcp auth (requires the Railway CLI, logged in and linked):

py -3.12 scripts/export_session_to_railway.py --service <service-name>

On macOS/Linux use python3 instead of py -3.12.

The conversion is fully offline and the session string is never printed — only its length. Treat TELEGRAM_SESSION_STRING like a password: it grants read access as your account. If it ever leaks, log out that session from Telegram's active-sessions screen.

Calling the hosted server

curl -X POST https://<your-app>.up.railway.app/mcp \
  -H "Authorization: Bearer $TELEGRAM_MCP_AUTH_TOKEN" \
  -H "Content-Type: application/json" \
  -H "Accept: application/json, text/event-stream" \
  -d '{"jsonrpc":"2.0","id":1,"method":"tools/list"}'

Requests without a valid token get 401; when the kill switch is on, everything except /health gets 503.

Health endpoint

GET /health needs no auth and leaks no account or group data — booleans only:

{"status": "ok", "sha": "<deploy commit>", "session_configured": true, "groups_configured": true}

When the kill switch is on, status is "disabled" but the HTTP status stays 200: Railway uses this path for deploy health checks, and a 503 would fail the kill-switch redeploy and leave the previous, still-enabled process running. Tool traffic is still rejected with 503 by the auth middleware. If you need a hard stop instead of the soft kill switch, take the service down entirely with railway down.

Troubleshooting

Session not initialized Run arbling-telegram-mcp auth first. The session file must exist before starting the MCP server.

Session expired If you see status: expired from refresh_session, the session was invalidated (you may have logged out on another device, or Telegram revoked it). Run arbling-telegram-mcp auth again.

Logging out / rotating the local session The local session is a SQLite database in WAL mode, so it consists of up to three files: session.session plus the session.session-wal / session.session-shm sidecars. Recent writes — including the auth key — can live in the -wal sidecar (especially after a crash), so deleting only .session is not enough: delete all three files when logging out or rotating credentials, then revoke the session from Telegram's active-sessions screen.

Group not found / 403 error The group ID in your YAML may be wrong or you may have left the group. Run arbling-telegram-mcp list-groups to rediscover and update the YAML.

read_recent_messages rejects a group_id I passed The group must be in curated-groups.yaml. Add it to the YAML first.

Telegram API rate limits (FloodWait) Telethon handles flood waits automatically. For large group lists with since='7d' + limit=500, expect the call to take 10–30 seconds. The server logs a warning when a wait exceeds 5 seconds.

YAML malformed list_curated_groups returns a dict with an error key if the YAML can't be parsed. Fix the YAML manually or regenerate with list-groups.

TELEGRAM_API_ID must be a number The API ID from https://my.telegram.org is always numeric (e.g., 12345678), not a string.

Development

git clone https://github.com/yev-arbling/arbling-telegram-mcp.git
cd arbling-telegram-mcp
pip install -e ".[dev]"
pytest

Tests mock Telethon — no real Telegram account needed for CI.

See CONTRIBUTING.md for the release-by-tag workflow.

Design decisions

1. Numeric chat_id in YAML: more reliable than @username — channel usernames can change. list-groups outputs numeric IDs. @username lookup is not supported in v0.1 to keep the dependency surface small.
2. Rate limit behavior: Telethon's built-in flood-wait handling is respected. Waits >5s are logged. Practical max query rate is ~30 messages/sec across all groups.
3. Media handling: non-text messages (photos, videos, voice notes) are skipped in read_recent_messages and counted in media_skipped. The agent reads text; binary content is out of scope for v0.1.
4. Sender attribution: signed channel posts include the signed-by name in the sender field; otherwise falls back to @username or display name.

License

Apache 2.0 — see LICENSE.