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How to Connect Claude to Telegram so it reads all your chats, not just a bot's

Prompt template

Read my unread Telegram chats and groups, tell me what needs an answer from me, and draft the replies for me to approve.

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Overview

People who live in Telegram, such as founders, community managers, investors and crypto traders, want Claude to do what they do there: catch up on unread chats, find a message from last month, summarize a group, draft replies. Claude has no Telegram connector of its own. With Reduck, Claude gets Telegram tools that act as your own account, through Telegram Web in your Chrome, so it reads every chat you can read.

Why it's hard

  • Claude has no built-in Telegram connector. You add one yourself, as an MCP server.
  • A bot sees almost nothing. Anthropic's own Telegram plugin for Claude Code connects a bot, and its README says: "Telegram's Bot API exposes neither message history nor search. The bot only sees messages as they arrive." A bot also sees only the chats it was added to, never your private chats.
  • The user-account way needs a developer setup. MTProto MCP servers (built on Telethon, GramJS or TDLib) log in as you with an api_id and api_hash from my.telegram.org, which often answers with a bare "ERROR", a login code typed in a terminal, and a session file that gives full access to your account. Telethon and Pyrogram, the libraries most of them use, are archived on GitHub.
  • Every chat is open to the agent. Messages from other people go into Claude's context, so the tools that write should ask before they act.

How Reduck does it

Reduck runs Telegram scripts in your own Chrome, where you are already signed in to web.telegram.org, and gives them to Claude as MCP tools:

  • get_inbox: your chats, groups and channels, with unread and mention counts, 100 a page.
  • get_conversation: one chat's history, 40 messages a call, back to its first message.
  • search_messages: a search for words in one chat or in all of them, between two dates.
  • get_group_members and get_contact_info: who is in a group, and one person's profile.
  • download_media: the file of one message, up to 6 MB.
  • send_message, mark_read and delete_message: the writes, which ask for your confirmation first.

Claude reads what you can read, history included, without a bot token, an api_id, a phone code or a session file. Reading does not mark anything as read.

How to start

  1. Create a free account at reduck.ai.
  2. Install the Reduck extension in Chrome and pair it.
  3. Connect Reduck to your agent: docs.reduck.ai.
  4. Ask: "Read my unread Telegram chats and groups, tell me what needs an answer from me, and draft the replies for me to approve."

Sign in to web.telegram.org in that Chrome first.

Ways to connect Claude to Telegram

Method Your private chats History and search Setup
Anthropic's Telegram plugin for Claude Code No, a bot's chats only No A bot from BotFather, a token
MTProto MCP server (telegram-mcp, mcp-telegram) Yes Yes An api_id and api_hash, a phone login, a session file
Reduck Yes Yes Telegram Web open in your Chrome

Where Reduck is weaker: it runs while your Chrome is open, and an MTProto server or a bot runs on a server around the clock. A bot is also the right tool when you want to chat with Claude from Telegram, rather than give Claude your Telegram.

FAQ

Not by itself: Telegram is not one of Claude's built-in connectors. Connected to Reduck, Claude reads the Telegram account you are signed in to in Chrome: your chat list with get_inbox, any chat's history with get_conversation, and a search across all your chats with search_messages. It works in Claude Code, Claude Desktop and claude.ai.
No. A bot sees only the chats it was added to, and Anthropic's own Telegram plugin for Claude Code says it plainly: Telegram's Bot API exposes neither message history nor search, and the bot only sees messages as they arrive. Reduck acts as your own account, in Telegram Web, so Claude sees what you see, history included.
Yes, every group and channel you are in, by its peer id from get_inbox, and a public channel by its @username without joining it. get_group_members lists a group's members, when the group shows them to members.
No. MTProto MCP servers (telegram-mcp, mcp-telegram and others) log in as you with an api_id and api_hash from my.telegram.org, a phone code and a session file that gives full access to your account. Reduck uses the Telegram Web session you already have in Chrome, so there is no app to create, no code to type in a terminal and no session file to protect.
Yes, with send_message, and Reduck asks the agent to show you the chat's title and get your confirmation before it sends or deletes anything. Telegram restricts accounts that act like bots, so send at the pace of a person and never message many people who did not write first.
No. The read scripts do not open the conversations, so they do not mark messages as read or send read receipts. mark_read marks a chat as read only when you ask for it.
Yes. Ask once with the prompt on this page, or schedule it from Claude Code or the Reduck CLI. The scripts run while your Chrome is open with the Reduck extension.
Yes. Reduck is an MCP server, so the same tools work in ChatGPT, Cursor, Codex and any other MCP client.

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