Teledigest

Teledigest is a Telegram digest bot that fetches posts from configured Telegram channels, summarizes them using OpenAI models, and publishes digests to a target channel.

Prerequisites

Before installing and running Teledigest, ensure the following tools are installed on your system:

Python

The bot requires at least 3.12 version of Python. Check your Python version:

python3 --version

Install examples:

• macOS (Homebrew)

  brew install python@3.12
  

• Ubuntu/Debian

  sudo add-apt-repository ppa:deadsnakes/ppa
  sudo apt-get update
  sudo apt-get install python3.12 python3.12-venv python3.12-dev
  

Poetry

The bot uses Poetry for dependency management and packaging. It requires at least version 2.0 of Poetry.

Install Poetry:

curl -sSL https://install.python-poetry.org | python3 -

or:

pip install poetry

Verify installation:

poetry --version

Fetching the project

git clone https://github.com/igoropaniuk/teledigest.git
cd teledigest

Obtaining a Telegram Bot Token

1. Open Telegram and start a chat with @BotFather
2. Run /newbot and follow the instructions
3. Copy the generated bot token - you will need it for the configuration file

Obtaining Telegram Application Credentials

1. Go to https://my.telegram.org
2. Log in with your phone number
3. Open API Development Tools
4. Create an application
5. Save api_id and api_hash

These are required for the Telegram client that fetches channel messages.

Obtaining an OpenAI API Key

1. Visit https://platform.openai.com/api-keys
2. Create a new API key
3. Copy the api key - you will need it for the configuration file

Preparing the configuration file

Before running the bot, create a configuration file, e.g. teledigest.conf:

[telegram]
api_id = 123456
api_hash = "your_api_hash"
bot_token = "123456:ABCDEF"

[bot]
channels = ["@news", "@events"]
summary_target = "@digest_channel"
summary_hour = 21
summary_minute = 0
allowed_users = "@admin,123456789"

[llm]
model = "gpt-5.1-mini"
api_key = "YOUR_OPENAI_API_KEY"

[storage.rag]
keywords = [
    "sanctions", "economy", "energy",
    "market", "budget",
]

[llm.prompts]
system = """
You are a Telegram digest bot. Produce concise, well-structured daily summaries.
"""

user = """
Summarize the following messages for {DAY}:

{MESSAGES}
"""

DAY and MESSAGES will be automatically replaced by the bot while building the final prompt.

Important

The bot must be added as an administrator to the target channel so it can publish digests.

Telegram Bot API doesn't permit joining channels automatically, so Teledigest starts a regular user session requiring two-factor authentication specifically for scraping channels. This will require inputting the phone number and 2FA dynamic password during the first run of the Teledigest.

Please check First run & authentication section for more details

Bot Architecture

Teledigest uses two separate Telegram clients:

1. Bot client - handles incoming bot commands and posts digests to the target channel. Requires a correct bot_token to be provided. Always starts automatically
2. User client - authenticated with api_id and api_hash, used to fetch posts from Telegram channels. An additional Telegram client instance was introduced to overcome the limitations of the Telegram Bot API, which doesn't allow bots to join channels.

This separation ensures correct access to the Telegram channels.

Installing and running the project with Poetry

Install dependencies

poetry install

Install pre-commit hook for code sanity checks:

poetry run pre-commit install

Run the bot

poetry run teledigest --config teledigest.conf

Bot Commands

Command	Description
/auth	Authorize the user client so it canto access and scrape channels
/start	Alias for /help
/help	Lists all supported bot commands
/status	Shows parsed/relevant counts (last 24h), schedule, model, ...
/today	Immediately triggers digest generation for last 24 hours
/digest	Alias for /today

Sanity checks

Teledigest uses ruff, black, isort, and mypy.

Run all checks:

poetry run ruff check .
poetry run black --check .
poetry run isort --check-only .
poetry run mypy
poetry run pytest

To auto‑format:

poetry run ruff check . --fix
poetry run black  .
poetry run isort .

Running with Docker

The bot can be run fully containerized using Docker. Configuration and persistent data (Telegram sessions + SQLite database) are mounted from the host.

Docker is recommended for long-running or production deployments.

Requirements

• Docker 20+
• Docker Compose v2 (docker compose)

Configuration

Create a config file on the host, for example teledigest.conf:

[telegram]
api_id = 123456
api_hash = "YOUR_API_HASH"
bot_token = "YOUR_BOT_TOKEN"
sessions_dir = "/data"

[storage]
db_path = "/data/messages_fts.db"

[logging]
level = "INFO"

Always use absolute paths (/data) inside the container for persistent files.

Create a directory for persistent data:

mkdir -p data

This directory stores:

• Telegram .session files
• SQLite database for scraped messages

Option A: Docker Compose (recommended)

docker-compose.yml

services:
  teledigest:
    build: .
    image: teledigest:latest
    command: ["--config", "/config/teledigest.conf"]
    volumes:
      - ./teledigest.conf:/config/teledigest.conf:ro
      - ./data:/data
    user: "${GID:-1000}:${UID:-1000}"
    restart: unless-stopped
    environment:
      TZ: ${TZ}

Start the bot

docker compose up --build

You can also provide timezone configuration before running docker compose:

export TZ=$(cat /etc/timezone)
docker compose up --build

Run in background:

docker compose up -d

View logs:

docker compose logs -f

Stop:

docker compose down

Option B: Plain Docker (no Compose)

Build the image:

docker build -t teledigest .

Run the container:

export TZ=$(cat /etc/timezone)
docker run -e TZ=$TZ --rm \
   --user "$(id -u):$(id -g)" \
   -v "$(pwd)/teledigest.conf:/config/teledigest.conf:ro" \
   -v "$(pwd)/data:/data" teledigest:latest

Permissions model

The container runs using the same UID/GID as the host user. This avoids permission issues with bind-mounted volumes and prevents errors such as:

• Permission denied
• SQLite readonly database errors First run & authentication If needed, ensure the data directory is writable:

chmod -R a+rwX data

First run & authentication

On first run, if the user session is missing:

• The bot starts normally
• Scraping is disabled
• /status explicitly shows that authorization is required

Authorizing via Telegram bot (recommended)

Authorization can be performed interactively via bot chat dialog:

1. /auth
2. Send your phone number (+123456789)
3. Send the 2FA code you receive.

When you authorize the user client via the /auth command, the bot asks you to type the Telegram login code with spaces between each digit, for example:

1 2 3 4 5

This is not a protocol requirement, but a practical workaround for Telegram's security system.

Telegram tries to detect situations where a login code might have been leaked or shared. If the code is forwarded or shared from your account and then used to log in from another client, Telegram may treat that as suspicious and block the login, even though the code itself is correct. In that case you may see a message similar to:

the code was entered correctly, but the login was not allowed because the code was previously shared from your account.

By asking you to type the code manually with spaces, the bot encourages a pattern that is clearly different from simply forwarding or copy-pasting the original message with the code. On the bot side, those spaces are removed before the code is sent to Telegram, so Telegram still receives the exact code it issued.

In short:

• You type: 1 2 3 4 5
• The bot converts it to: 12345
• This reduces the chance of Telegram treating the login as a suspicious "shared code" login and blocking it.

If authorization fails, repeat /auth.

CLI authorization (--auth)

It's possible to perform authentication via CLI and then exit:

poetry run teledigest --config teledigest.conf --auth

Or do this inside docker container:

docker run -it --rm --user "$(id -u):$(id -g)" \
   -v "$(pwd)/teledigest.conf:/config/teledigest.conf:ro" \
   -v "$(pwd)/data:/data" teledigest:latest \
   --config /config/teledigest.conf --auth

Expect this output during initial session registration:

$ poetry run teledigest --config teledigest.conf --auth
[INFO] teledigest - Logging configured at INFO level
[INFO] teledigest - Using session paths: user=data/user.session, bot=data/bot.session
[INFO] teledigest - Starting user & bot clients...
[INFO] teledigest - Channels to scrape (user account): @channel1, @channel2
[INFO] telethon.network.mtprotosender - Connecting to 0.0.0.0/TcpFull...
[INFO] telethon.network.mtprotosender - Connection to 0.0.0.0/TcpFull complete!
Please enter your phone (or bot token): +48888888888
Please enter the code you received: 12345
Signed in successfully as User; remember to not break the ToS!
[INFO] teledigest - Auth-only mode: skipping channel joins and handler registration.
[INFO] telethon.network.mtprotosender - Disconnecting from 0.0.0.0/TcpFull...
[INFO] telethon.network.mtprotosender - Not disconnecting (already have no connection)
[INFO] telethon.network.mtprotosender - Disconnection from 0.0.0.0/TcpFull complete!
[INFO] teledigest - Authentication completed

Then you can restart the bot without --auth param and it will use existing sessions files.

Do not delete the data/ directory unless you want to re-authenticate.

Why bot-based authorization is preferred over CLI auth (especially in Docker)

Even CLI auth mode (teledigest --auth) still exists and works fine for local development on your machine, it is not recommended as the primary method in Docker / containerized environments.

There are a few reasons for that:

1. Docker often has no usable stdin

   The boot CLI-style --auth expects to read the phone number, login code and (optional) 2FA password from stdin (your terminal). In a typical Docker setup you will run the container in detached mode, or under an orchestrator (Kubernetes, docker-compose, etc.) with no interactive TTY attached.

   In that situation there is nowhere for Telethon to read from, so the process either blocks waiting on stdin or fails with an error. Attaching manually to container stdin just to type a one-time code is awkward and fragile.

2. Non-interactive / automated deployments

   Containers are usually started by scripts or orchestration tools, not by a human at a terminal. An interactive login step in the startup path breaks this model and makes fully automated deployments impossible. The bot-based /auth flow lets you keep the container fully non-interactive: you authorize once via Telegram, and the session file is reused next time the container starts.

3. Clear separation of concerns

   With bot-based auth, the container just runs the bot and user clients using existing session files. All interactive steps (phone, code, password) happen in Telegram itself, where you already expect to handle sensitive login information. The container only sees the resulting session, not the raw codes.

Because of these constraints, the recommended approach is:

• use teledigest --auth only for local, manual login when you are actually sitting at a terminal; or when you are deliberately managing sessions outside Docker, and
• use the /auth bot command for normal Docker / production deployments, where stdin is not reliably available and the process must remain non-interactive.

Contributing

We follow a clean history approach with fast‑forward merges.

1. Fork the repository first

2. Fetch your fork:

   git clone https://github.com/<your-username>/teledigest.git -b main
   cd teledigest
   

3. Create a feature branch:

   git checkout -b feature/my-change
   

4. Commit your changes and push:

   git push -u origin feature/my-change
   

5. Open a Pull Request on GitHub.

Commit Message Style

This project uses the Conventional Commits specification: https://www.conventionalcommits.org/en/v1.0.0/

Example commit messages:

$ git log --oneline
0d6c6ed docs(readme): add comprehensive project README
bee85ca chore: fix type and style issues
da78832 chore(dev): add black, isort, mypy and ruff as dev dependencies
654ca70 feat(config): migrate bot configuration to toml
05f221c feat(db): use messages from the last 24 hours for digest generation
4971b97 refactor: reorganize project into dedicated modules
...

License

This project is licensed under the MIT License.