tgcli

Telegram CLI tool in pure Rust using grammers (MTProto). No TDLib, no C/C++ dependencies. cargo build and done.

Quick Install

Homebrew (macOS/Linux)

brew tap dgrr/tgcli
brew install tgcli

Shell Script

curl -fsSL https://raw.githubusercontent.com/dgrr/tgcli/main/install.sh | bash

Build from Source

cargo build --release
cp target/release/tgcli /usr/local/bin/

Features

• Auth: Phone → code → 2FA authentication
• Sync: Bootstrap + live updates, stored in libSQL (turso) with FTS5
• Chats: List and show chats from local DB
• Messages: List, search (FTS5), context view, show
• Send: Text messages (direct or via Unix socket IPC)
• Contacts: Search and show from local DB
• Read: Mark messages as read
• Output: Human-readable tables or --json

Quick Start

# Build (no system dependencies needed!)
cargo build --release

# Or with just
just build
just install  # copies to /opt/homebrew/bin

# Authenticate
tgcli auth

# Sync messages
tgcli sync --once

# List chats
tgcli chats list

# Search messages
tgcli messages search "hello"

# Send a message
tgcli send --to <chat_id> --message "Hello!"

Architecture

src/
  main.rs          CLI entry point (clap)
  cmd/             Command handlers
    auth.rs        Phone → code → 2FA
    sync.rs        Bootstrap + live sync daemon
    chats.rs       List/show chats
    messages.rs    List/search/context/show messages
    send.rs        Send text messages
    contacts.rs    Search/show contacts
    read.rs        Mark as read
    version.rs     Version info
  store/           turso (libSQL) + FTS5 storage
  tg/              grammers client wrapper
  app/             App struct + business logic
    sync.rs        Sync logic
    send.rs        Send logic
    socket.rs      Unix socket IPC
  out/             Output formatting

Storage

• Session: ~/.tgcli/session.db (grammers SqliteSession)
• Data: ~/.tgcli/tgcli.db (chats, contacts, messages + FTS5)
• Socket: ~/.tgcli/tgcli.sock (IPC for concurrent send during sync)

Why Rust?

The Go version (tgcli-go) uses TDLib (C++), requiring complex cross-compilation and system dependencies. tgcli is pure Rust — zero C/C++ deps, single cargo build, tiny binary.

Uses turso for database storage — a pure Rust libSQL implementation with no native compilation required.

See Also

• tgcli-go - Go/TDLib version (more features, requires TDLib)

License

MIT