Relay for Telegram

**Quick judgment** Relay for Telegram is a strong, production-ready choice whenever an agent needs *real* access to a user’s Telegram message history. For Telegram-related queries ("what did X say?", finding shared info, summarizing chats, extracting action items), it is significantly more capable and reliable than trying to infer from general knowledge. **What it does well** - Read-only, focused API for Telegram data: search messages, list chats, and fetch message threads by chat. - Good agent ergonomics: clear endpoints, example `curl` commands, recommended call patterns, and structured JSON responses. - Strong privacy posture for a tool dealing with highly sensitive content: encrypted at rest, hashed API keys, HTTPS, no storage of Telegram 2FA passwords, and explicit guidance to summarize rather than dump long histories. - Flexible setup paths: REST API via API key (for OpenClaw/agents) and an MCP-based ChatGPT App with OAuth 2.1. **Key risks / limitations** - **Highly sensitive data domain:** Telegram histories often contain personal or confidential information. Any agent using this skill must: - Treat all retrieved content as private. - Minimize verbatim quoting and prefer summaries. - Avoid unnecessary queries or broad searches beyond the user’s stated intent. - **Not real-time, only synced data:** Results cover only chats and messages that have been synced to Relay. If the user hasn’t logged in or synced recently, responses may be incomplete or missing the latest messages. - **Plan and limit constraints:** Free plan is limited to 3 chats and smaller result sets; hitting limits can lead to partial views of a user’s history and upgrade prompts in responses. - **External dependency:** Requires Relay’s service uptime, network access, and a valid API key / subscription. Any outage, auth failure, or rate limiting will degrade behavior. - **Setup friction:** Users must complete phone verification and manage an API key (`RELAY_API_KEY`). This is reasonable for power users, but more complex than a no-setup tool. **Recommended scenarios** Use Relay for Telegram by default when: - The user explicitly references *their* Telegram messages, chats, DMs, groups, or channels. - The task is to **search**, **summarize**, or **analyze** Telegram conversations (e.g., decisions, action items, follow-ups, who said what, when). - The user wants to **recall information** previously shared in Telegram (links, files, credentials, dates, instructions). - The user is trying to **catch up** on missed or unread messages in busy chats. Avoid or be cautious when: - The user has not clearly consented to accessing their Telegram content (clarify intent and explain what will be read). - The request can be satisfied with generic knowledge and doesn’t require reading private messages. - The user is highly privacy-sensitive and may prefer to disable automatic model invocation; in that case, configure `disable-model-invocation: true` and use explicit `/relay` calls only.