Telegram Reader — Read-Only Access to Telegram Channels for Collecting Financial News and Market Intelligence

Skill Overview

Telegram Reader is a read-only skill based on the command-line tool tdl. It is used to read financial news, cryptocurrency signals, and market research content from Telegram channels and groups, and export messages as JSON for subsequent analysis.

Use Cases

1. Tracking Cryptocurrency and Trading Signals
   When you want to review what a Telegram signal channel has recently posted or verify historical trade calls within a specific time range, you can directly export a specified number of messages or messages from a specific period instead of endlessly scrolling upward on your phone.

2. Monitoring Earnings Season and Macroeconomic News
   Batch-export the latest messages from multiple financial channels for centralized reading, quickly identify key information such as earnings surprises, rating changes, and central bank statements, and efficiently monitor multiple sources for investment research.

3. Organizing Data Sources for Quantitative Research
   Export group discussions by message ID range or topic, save them as JSON files, and use them as raw data for subsequent text analysis, sentiment statistics, or corpus development.

Core Features

1. Listing and Filtering Chats
   Use tdl chat ls to view all conversations associated with the account. Chats can be filtered by type, such as showing only channels, or by name keywords. Results can also be output as JSON, helping you quickly locate target channels among a large number of subscriptions.

2. Exporting Messages in Multiple Ways
   tdl chat export supports three ways to specify messages: by the most recent number of messages (-T last), by a Unix timestamp range (-T time), or by a message ID range (-T id). You can also use --topic to read messages under a specific topic in forum groups. Combining this with --all --with-content ensures that text content is exported rather than only media messages.

3. A Safe Read-Only Boundary
   This skill only wraps read-only commands. It does not send messages, join or leave channels, or perform any write operations. The login session is completed once and stored locally, so subsequent calls do not require repeated authentication.

Frequently Asked Questions

Can Telegram Reader send messages or automatically join channels?

No. This is explicitly a read-only skill that only supports operations such as listing chats, searching for channels, and exporting messages. It does not include any write capabilities, such as sending messages or joining or leaving channels. If your goal is to automate posting or manage a community, this skill is not suitable.

Do I need a Telegram account before using it? How do I log in?

You need a Telegram account to complete a one-time login. The skill first checks whether tdl is installed and whether the session is valid. If you are not logged in, it provides three options: QR code login (tdl login -T qr, which is fastest when scanned with the mobile app), phone number and verification code login, or importing an existing session from the official Telegram Desktop application. During the login process, you must enter your phone number and verification code interactively in the terminal. The skill will not handle your account credentials for you. The session is stored locally and can be used long-term after a single login. If you need to separate work and personal accounts, you can manage multiple sessions using namespaces such as -n work.

What does an exported message contain? Can media files also be retrieved?

Each exported message includes fields such as the message ID, publication time, text content, sender, view count, and media metadata. The data is written as JSON to a file you specify, making it more reliable to read and process than directly parsing terminal output. Note that exporting text messages requires --all --with-content; otherwise, only media messages may be exported by default, resulting in a file that contains no text even though it was successfully generated. The skill itself focuses on reading channel content and does not download media files.

Can I read private channels or channels I have not joined?

No. Access depends on the permissions of your Telegram account—only channels that the account has joined or is otherwise authorized to access can be read. If CHANNEL_PRIVATE is returned, it means the current account does not have access to the channel, and you must join it yourself through the Telegram client first. Similarly, FLOOD_WAIT_X indicates that Telegram’s rate limit has been triggered. Wait for the specified number of seconds before trying again, and avoid making repeated high-frequency requests.

Does this skill cost anything? How many channels can it read?

The skill itself is free. It is simply a wrapper around the open-source command-line tool tdl, and there are no additional limits on the number of messages that can be read beyond any applicable message-count limits. What you can actually read depends on which channels your Telegram account has subscribed to and Telegram’s API rate limits. It is recommended to start with a small export, such as the most recent 20 messages, to confirm that the channel and format are correct before expanding the scope as needed.