Telegram MCP server

This MCP telegram server acts as a bridge between Telegram API and AI assistants, providing read-only access to your Telegram conversations using the Model Context Protocol (MCP). With this server, AI assistants like Claude Desktop can access and summarize your Telegram messages.

Prerequisites

• uv tool

Installation

Install the MCP Telegram server using the uv package manager:

uv tool install git+https://github.com/sparfenyuk/mcp-telegram

To update an existing installation:

uv tool upgrade --reinstall

To uninstall the server:

uv tool uninstall mcp-telegram

Telegram API Configuration

Before using the server, you need to connect to the Telegram API:

1. Get your API ID and hash from Telegram API
2. Run the sign-in command:

mcp-telegram sign-in --api-id <your-api-id> --api-hash <your-api-hash> --phone-number <your-phone-number>

3. Enter the verification code received from Telegram
4. If you have two-factor authentication enabled, you'll need to enter your password as well

To log out from the Telegram API:

mcp-telegram logout

Claude Desktop Configuration

Configure Claude Desktop to recognize the Telegram MCP server:

1. Open the Claude Desktop configuration file:

   • MacOS: ~/Library/Application Support/Claude/claude_desktop_config.json
   • Windows: %APPDATA%\Claude\claude_desktop_config.json

2. Add the server configuration:

{
  "mcpServers": {
    "mcp-telegram": {
        "command": "mcp-server",
        "env": {
          "TELEGRAM_API_ID": "<your-api-id>",
          "TELEGRAM_API_HASH": "<your-api-hash>",
        },
      }
    }
  }
}

Available Features

The MCP Telegram server currently provides these read-only features:

• Get the list of dialogs (chats, channels, groups)
• Get the list of unread messages in a specific dialog

Practical Use Cases

• Create summaries of unread messages
• Find discussions on specific topics
• Get an overview of recent activities across your Telegram chats

Troubleshooting

Connection Issues

If Claude Desktop displays "Could not connect to MCP server mcp-telegram", check:

• Ensure you're using the full path to the uv binary in the configuration file
• Verify your API credentials are correct in the config file
• Make sure the server is properly installed

With this setup, your AI assistant can now access and work with your Telegram data while maintaining security and privacy.

How to install this MCP server

For Claude Code

To add this MCP server to Claude Code, run this command in your terminal:

claude mcp add-json "mcp-telegram" '{"command":"mcp-server","env":{"TELEGRAM_API_ID":"<your-api-id>","TELEGRAM_API_HASH":"<your-api-hash>"}}'

See the official Claude Code MCP documentation for more details.

For Cursor

There are two ways to add an MCP server to Cursor. The most common way is to add the server globally in the ~/.cursor/mcp.json file so that it is available in all of your projects.

If you only need the server in a single project, you can add it to the project instead by creating or adding it to the .cursor/mcp.json file.

Adding an MCP server to Cursor globally

To add a global MCP server go to Cursor Settings > Tools & Integrations and click "New MCP Server".

When you click that button the ~/.cursor/mcp.json file will be opened and you can add your server like this:

{
    "mcpServers": {
        "mcp-telegram": {
            "command": "mcp-server",
            "env": {
                "TELEGRAM_API_ID": "<your-api-id>",
                "TELEGRAM_API_HASH": "<your-api-hash>"
            }
        }
    }
}

Adding an MCP server to a project

To add an MCP server to a project you can create a new .cursor/mcp.json file or add it to the existing one. This will look exactly the same as the global MCP server example above.

How to use the MCP server

Once the server is installed, you might need to head back to Settings > MCP and click the refresh button.

The Cursor agent will then be able to see the available tools the added MCP server has available and will call them when it needs to.

You can also explicitly ask the agent to use the tool by mentioning the tool name and describing what the function does.

For Claude Desktop

To add this MCP server to Claude Desktop:

1. Find your configuration file:

• macOS: ~/Library/Application Support/Claude/claude_desktop_config.json
• Windows: %APPDATA%\Claude\claude_desktop_config.json
• Linux: ~/.config/Claude/claude_desktop_config.json

2. Add this to your configuration file:

{
    "mcpServers": {
        "mcp-telegram": {
            "command": "mcp-server",
            "env": {
                "TELEGRAM_API_ID": "<your-api-id>",
                "TELEGRAM_API_HASH": "<your-api-hash>"
            }
        }
    }
}

3. Restart Claude Desktop for the changes to take effect