televault 2.0.0

Unlimited cloud storage using Telegram MTProto. No local DB - everything on Telegram.

TeleVault

Unlimited cloud storage using your own Telegram account. No local database — everything lives in a private Telegram channel, encrypted on your machine before upload.

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Install

pip install televault

Python 3.11+ is recommended.

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Quick Start

# 1) Set up your Telegram API credentials (one-time setup)
export TELEGRAM_API_ID=your_api_id
export TELEGRAM_API_HASH=your_api_hash

# 2) Login with your Telegram account (MTProto, not bot API)
televault login

# 3) Set up storage channel (interactive)
televault setup

# 4) Upload
TELEVAULT_PASSWORD="strong-password" televault push /path/to/file

# 5) List & download
televault ls
TELEVAULT_PASSWORD="strong-password" televault pull <file_id_or_name>

Basic commands:

• televault login – authenticate with Telegram
• televault setup – set up storage channel (interactive or CLI flags)
• televault push – upload files / folders (-r for recursive)
• televault pull – download by id or name
• televault ls – list files with size/chunks/encryption
• televault search – fuzzy search by name
• televault status – overall vault stats
• televault whoami – show current Telegram account
• televault logout – clear session

All commands check authentication first and will prompt you to run televault login if needed.

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Interactive TUI

TeleVault includes a rich Terminal User Interface (TUI) for visual file management:

# Launch the TUI
televault tui
# or
televault-tui

TUI Features:

• 📁 File Browser – Browse all files with details (size, chunks, encryption status)
• 🔍 Search – Real-time search through your files
• 📤 Upload – Interactive file upload with password protection
• 📥 Download – One-click file download
• 📊 Statistics – View vault stats (total files, storage used)
• ⌨️ Keyboard Shortcuts:
  • q - Quit
  • r - Refresh file list
  • u - Upload file
  • d - Download selected file
  • s - Search files
  • l - Login
  • Delete - Delete selected file
  • Enter - Download selected file

The TUI provides a more visual and interactive way to manage your vault compared to the CLI commands.

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Storage Channel Setup

The televault setup command provides three ways to configure your storage:

Interactive Mode (Recommended)

televault setup

You'll be prompted to choose:

TeleVault Storage Channel Setup

How would you like to set up your storage?
  1. Create a new private channel (recommended)
  2. Use an existing channel by ID

Enter your choice (1 or 2):

Non-Interactive Options

Auto-create a new channel:

televault setup --auto-create

Use an existing channel:

televault setup --channel-id -1001234567890

Note: Channel IDs should start with -100 (e.g., -1001234567890). Make sure the bot is a member of the channel if using an existing one.

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Project Vision

TeleVault is not a SaaS. The goal is to give hackers and power users a simple, encrypted off‑site backup tool built on top of infrastructure they already use every day.

• Turn Telegram into your personal encrypted blob store instead of spinning up S3 buckets, servers, or dashboards.
• Stay client‑side by design – TeleVault handles chunking, indexing, and crypto; Telegram just stores opaque data.
• Be as easy to adopt as pip install + televault login, with no extra services to maintain.
• Stay portable – future tooling should make it easy to export / migrate data so you’re never locked into Telegram.

This should feel closer to restic/borg than a cloud app: a sharp, scriptable tool that respects your threat model.

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Features

• MTProto direct – Uses Telethon + MTProto (no bot API limits)
• Encrypted-by-default – Client-side AES‑256‑GCM, password-derived keys
• Zero local DB – Metadata index is stored on Telegram itself
• Chunked uploads – Large files split into chunks (up to Telegram's per-file limit)
• Resumable transfers – Can continue interrupted uploads/downloads
• Folder support – Upload directories while preserving structure
• Rich CLI – Progress bars, colored output, and helpful error messages
• Interactive TUI – Full terminal UI with file browser, search, and management
• Interactive setup – Choose between creating new channel or using existing one

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Security Model

TeleVault is designed so that Telegram sees only encrypted blobs and JSON metadata; your password never leaves your machine.

• Encryption

  • Files are optionally compressed and then encrypted with AES‑256‑GCM.
  • Keys are derived from your password using scrypt (memory‑hard KDF).
  • Encryption happens before data is sent to Telegram.

• Indexing & Metadata

  • Each file has a small JSON metadata message (size, name, chunk ids, hash).
  • A pinned "index" message in your channel maps file IDs → Telegram message IDs.
  • No external database or server is required.

• Sessions & Accounts

  • TeleVault authenticates using a standard Telethon session file.
  • That session lives in your config directory (see below) and is not uploaded.

• Threat Model (summary)

  • If someone gets access to your Telegram account and your password, they can read your data.
  • If they only get Telegram’s servers or just the channel history, they only see encrypted chunks + metadata.

Important: Don’t lose your password. There is no recovery if you forget it and have encryption enabled.

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Configuration

Configuration is stored under:

~/.config/televault/config.json

Example:

{
  "channel_id": -1003652003243,
  "chunk_size": 104857600,
  "compression": true,
  "encryption": true,
  "parallel_uploads": 3,
  "parallel_downloads": 5,
  "max_retries": 3,
  "retry_delay": 1.0
}

You can override encryption on a per-command basis:

# disable encryption for this upload only
televault push movie.mkv --no-encrypt

# disable compression
televault push backup.tar --no-compress

The default password can also be set via environment variable:

export TELEVAULT_PASSWORD="strong-password"
televault push secrets.zip

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From Source (dev)

git clone https://github.com/YahyaToubali/televault.git
cd televault

# create an isolated env (recommended)
python -m venv .venv
source .venv/bin/activate

pip install -e .[dev]

Run tests:

pytest

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Roadmap (early ideas)

This is intentionally small for now; priorities will change as you use it.

• Snapshots & versioning
  • televault snapshot ~/Projects with named snapshots and retention rules.
  • Simple policies like "keep daily snapshots for 7 days, weekly for 4 weeks".
• Smarter TUI
  • Better file browser, filters (by size/date/encrypted), and batch actions.
• Scheduling helpers
  • Tiny helper commands or docs for cron/systemd timers ("backup this folder nightly").
• Export / migrate tooling
  • One‑shot export from Telegram → local disk or other storage (S3, filesystem, etc.).
• Multi‑vault support
  • Multiple channels as separate vaults (e.g. personal, work, archives).

If you’re reading this on GitHub and want to use TeleVault seriously, open an issue with your use case so priorities can be adjusted.

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Requirements

• Telegram account + API credentials from my.telegram.org
  • Create an app to get your api_id and api_hash
  • Set them as environment variables:

    export TELEGRAM_API_ID=your_api_id
    export TELEGRAM_API_HASH=your_api_hash
    

• Python 3.11 or newer

Tip: Add the export lines to your ~/.bashrc, ~/.zshrc, or ~/.profile to make them persistent.

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License

MIT

Author: Yahya Toubali · @yahyatoubali