Telegram

v2 stores message text plus public image, video, audio, and document pointers when Telegram exposes them. It supports public announcement-channel previews only: no bot token, private chat, member-only group, or discussion replies.

What it collects

Argus anonymously scrapes Telegram’s public channel preview for announcement posts. Each parsed post uses the canonical https://t.me/<channel>/<numeric-id> URL.

Prerequisites

Choose public channel usernames only. The public-preview adapter needs no Telegram account, bot token, session, or phone number.

Configure the source

sources:
  telegram:
    enabled: true
    adapter: public-web

public-web is the only supported adapter value.

Configure watches

Channel usernames contain letters, digits, and underscores, without @ or a t.me/ URL.

watches:
  - id: release-announcements
    schedule: "*/15 * * * *"
    inputs:
      telegram:
        channels: [telegram]

Validate and apply

argus config validate /opt/argus/argus.yaml
argus config apply /opt/argus/argus.yaml

Verify ingestion

Use argus doctor --json and then request GET /v1/records?source=telegram with your API bearer token. Trigger a configured watch only when an immediate check is needed.

Limits and safety

Private chats, groups, direct messages, invite-only content, and content behind Telegram access controls are excluded. Preview downloads have a 20-second timeout and a 2 MiB body limit.

Troubleshooting

• Use the channel username, not @name, a numeric chat ID, or the full URL.
• Confirm the channel has a public preview and the source is enabled.
• A Telegram HTTP failure is recorded as a failed collection job; inspect argus logs argus.