Recipes: an agent and your Telegram

How to hand Claude Code or Codex regular work with your Telegram: a morning summary, a report on a chat, who owes what, what you have not answered. Each recipe gives the request to the agent, what it is allowed to run, and how to run it on a schedule.

Once, firstCopy Anchor Link

1. tg is installed and logged in: installation.md, sessions.md.

2. The agent knows how to use tg. Give it the skill file:

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   # Claude Code
   mkdir -p ~/.claude/skills/tg-cli && tg skill show > ~/.claude/skills/tg-cli/SKILL.md
   # Codex and Gemini CLI
   mkdir -p ~/.agents/skills/tg-cli && tg skill show > ~/.agents/skills/tg-cli/SKILL.md

3. Save the requests below in files, for example in ~/tg-recipes/. The schedule commands read the request from a file.

Claude Desktop, Cursor and other clients without a terminal need no skill file. Connect the MCP server (tg mcp config prints the entry for their settings) and use its ready prompts: catch-up, review, reply, find (mcp.md).

What the agent may doCopy Anchor Link

An agent on a schedule works without you, so the limits go into settings, not into the request. An agent can misread "send nothing"; it cannot get around a setting it is not allowed to change.

Limit what the agent may run. Claude Code in -p mode runs only the commands in --allowedTools. With no tg messages send in the list, the agent cannot call it:

claude -p "$(cat ~/tg-recipes/morning.md)" --allowedTools "Bash(tg inbox:*)"

Limit what the profile may do. This holds for any agent:

tg config set permissions.messages readonly    # no sends, edits or deletions
tg config set permissions.messages.send ask    # or: a yes or no before each send
tg config set sendsPerHour 5                   # or: at most five sends an hour
tg recipients add "Book club"                  # and only to the chats on this list

permissions limits your own commands too, until you change it back: tg config unset permissions.messages. To limit only the agent, give it a profile of its own. Every attempt to send, refused ones included, is in tg sends list. The limits are described in security.md.

Reading gives nothing away. No command in the recipes below marks anything read: nobody sees that the agent opened a chat.

Running on a scheduleCopy Anchor Link

• Claude Desktop scheduled tasks run on your computer, so they have tg and your login. See Claude's documentation.

• cron and claude -p, on any computer that is on at that time:

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  30 8 * * * claude -p "$(cat ~/tg-recipes/morning.md)" --allowedTools "Bash(tg inbox:*)" >> ~/tg-recipes/morning.log 2>&1

  cron starts jobs with an almost empty environment, which breaks tg on Linux in two ways:

  • node: not found, exit code 127. Node from nvm, fnm or Volta is not on the system PATH, and cron knows only that one.
  • "no Telegram app credentials found … although it has logged in on this machine", exit code 4. tg cannot reach the keyring. Do not log in again: the login is fine, the environment is not.

  Put both lines at the top of crontab -e, with your values. The folder is dirname "$(which node)", the number is id -u:

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  PATH=/home/you/.nvm/versions/node/v24.0.0/bin:/usr/local/bin:/usr/bin:/bin
  XDG_RUNTIME_DIR=/run/user/1000

  The keyring is open while you are logged in to the computer. Run the first one by hand and read the log. About -p mode: Claude's documentation.

• Inside an open Claude Code session: /loop, or "remind me at 15:00". It works while the session is open (Claude's documentation).

Claude's cloud routines do not fit: they run elsewhere, where there is no tg and no login of yours.

Morning summaryCopy Anchor Link

Writes to Telegram: no. Allow: Bash(tg inbox:*).

Run tg inbox --new --json. Group the messages by chat. For each chat, one line: who writes and what they want. Put first what needs an answer today. Fold adverts and service notifications into one line at the end.

--new shows each message once: tg remembers where it stopped, and the next run starts there. The first run looks back 24 hours.

Weekly report on a chatCopy Anchor Link

Writes to Telegram: no. Allow: Bash(tg messages list:*).

Read the last 7 days of the chat "Book club": tg messages list "Book club" --after-time 7d --limit 200 --json. If the answer says "hasMore": true, read on. Write a report: what was decided, who took on what and by when, which questions are still open. Give each point its date and author.

Who owes whatCopy Anchor Link

Writes to Telegram: no. Allow: Bash(tg review:*), Bash(tg messages context:*), Bash(tg messages search:*).

Run tg review --since-time <where the last review ended> --json (without --since-time, the last 3 days). Sort it into three lists: what I owe, what I wait for from others, what needs clarifying. Give each point its chat, date and the message ids it rests on; a deadline only if one was named. Before you call something overdue, check whether it was done later. At the end, say which --since-time the next review starts from, and list the open points.

The next review is the same request plus the open points from the last one. In an MCP client it is the review prompt.

What you have not answeredCopy Anchor Link

The shortest form is tg review --since-time 7d --unanswered --json: questions nobody answered — to you in one-to-one chats, to you or to the admins in groups. The recipe below is wider: it also catches requests without a question mark.

Writes to Telegram: no. Allow: Bash(tg chats list:*), Bash(tg messages list:*).

Run tg chats list --kind dialog --limit 30 --json. For every chat whose last message is from the last 7 days, read tg messages list <chat id> --limit 5 --json. Show the chats where the last message is not mine and asks a question or makes a request: who, about what, and how many days ago.

Find something that was saidCopy Anchor Link

Writes to Telegram: no. Allow: Bash(tg messages search:*), Bash(tg messages context:*).

Search for "invoice" with tg messages search invoice --json. For each hit, read tg messages context <locator> --json and tell me who said what, and when.

Search reads only what this machine has kept. For a chat's whole history, fetch it first — that is a request from your account, so do it yourself: tg store fetch <chat> (archive.md).

Draft a replyCopy Anchor Link

Writes to Telegram: only after your yes. This one is for a conversation with the agent, not a schedule.

Read the last 20 messages of the chat with @example_user and suggest an answer to their last question. Do not send it — show me the text.

Once you agree, the agent sends it: tg messages send @example_user "…". An agent without a terminal connects with tg mcp --confirm-send: before each send you see the chat and the text and answer yes or no (mcp.md).

A group you runCopy Anchor Link

Writes to Telegram: no. Allow: Bash(tg review:*), Bash(tg chats events:*), Bash(tg chats members list:*).

Run tg review --chat "Hiking" --unanswered 4h --json and tg chats events "Hiking" --since-time 7d --json. Briefly: which questions wait for an answer, from whom and since when; who joined or was added this week, and by whom. Do not answer anyone — list what I should reply to.

Every scenario for a group: groups.md.

Similar collectionsCopy Anchor Link

Other people's recipes for Telegram and an agent. Their requests work with tg once the tools are replaced by commands:

• Telegram MCP: the complete guide — a morning pass over the inbox, draft replies, a channel digest, a search across several chats.
• pioh/tg — Claude Code and Codex with a personal Telegram account: a digest every N minutes, "remind me if I have not answered mum in 15 minutes", watching people and chats.
• Gorgias MCP cookbook — recipes for customer support, but well made: each says whether it writes anything, and what to change for yourself.