Telegram

Using hosted SimplePost? See connection requirements. The credential setup below is for your own SDK, local CLI, or self-hosted integration.

Telegram is the simplest provider to set up. SimplePost posts through a bot token and a target chat ID. There is no OAuth flow.

Content support

Current hosted app and core source

Capability	SimplePost support
Text / caption (characters)	4,096 text; 1,024 caption
Media	10 items max; Mixed media supported
Image size	10 MiB maximum
Video size	50 MiB maximum

• SimplePost downloads URL media and uploads it to Telegram using multipart/form-data.

These validation limits also match published SDK 1.3.1.

Provider permissions and quotas still apply. SimplePost storage can impose a lower upload limit. MB/GB use decimal bytes; MiB/GiB use binary bytes.

Set up credentials

1. Create a bot

1. Open Telegram and start a chat with BotFather.
2. Send /newbot.
3. Follow the prompts.
4. Copy the bot token.

2. Get the chat ID

For a public channel or group, you can often use the handle:

@your_channel

For private chats or groups:

1. Add the bot to the chat.
2. Send a message in the chat.
3. Call getUpdates with the bot token:

curl "https://api.telegram.org/bot$TELEGRAM_BOT_TOKEN/getUpdates"

4. Find chat.id in the response.

Environment variables

TELEGRAM_BOT_TOKEN=

The chat ID is not read from any env var. Pass it through options.telegram.chatId on every SDK call, or store it on the local CLI account / accounts.json entry as platformAccountId.

SDK options

await post({
  content: { text: "Hello <b>Telegram</b>" },
  platforms: ["telegram"],
  options: {
    telegram: {
      chatId: "@mychannel",
      parseMode: "HTML",
    },
  },
});

parseMode can be HTML, Markdown, or MarkdownV2. Note that Telegram requires aggressive escaping in MarkdownV2 (every _*[]()~\>#+-=|.!must be escaped); pickHTML` if you do not need that level of control.

Reply to an existing message:

await post({
  content: { text: "Replying" },
  platforms: ["telegram"],
  options: {
    telegram: { chatId: "@mychannel", replyTo: "12345" },
  },
});

REST server account

Add this entry under accounts in the self-hosted REST server's accounts.json:

{
  "id": "telegram-news",
  "platform": "telegram",
  "platformAccountId": "@your_channel",
  "credentials": { "botToken": "123456:ABC..." },
  "options": { "parseMode": "HTML" }
}