Telegram to Your Second Brain

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The only things this needs from you are your phone number and a one-time login code. Everything else is handled for you. No keys, no accounts to set up.

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Easiest way: just ask your Command Center

If you have the Command Center (Claude Code) app, you don't need to touch Terminal at all.

Save the telegram-to-brain.zip that was sent to you (your Downloads folder is fine).
Open your Command Center app and type: /import-telegram
It does the setup for you. It will ask you three things in the chat, your phone number, the login code Telegram sends you, and which chats to pull. That's all you do.

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Approve each step when it asks. You never open Terminal and never type any commands. If you don't have the Command Center app, use the manual steps below instead.

Or do it manually (no Command Center app)

Unzip the file

Find the telegram-to-brain.zip that was sent to you.

Double-click it. You'll get a folder with two files inside. Leave them together.

Open Terminal

Press Cmd + Space, type Terminal, press Enter. A plain text window opens, that's normal.

Point Terminal at the folder

This tells Terminal to work inside the unzipped folder.

Type cd followed by a space (don't press Enter yet).
Then drag the unzipped folder from Finder onto the Terminal window. It fills in the path.
Now press Enter.

Start it

Paste this line and press Enter:

bash telegram-install.sh

The first time, it sets a few things up and downloads what it needs. One download is large, so give it a few minutes. This only happens once.

Log in (one time)

It will ask you three things:

Your phone number , type it with the country code, e.g. +27...
A login code , Telegram sends this inside the Telegram app itself (a message from "Telegram"), not by SMS. Open Telegram, read the code, type it in.
Your Telegram password , only if you have two-step verification turned on.

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This login happens once. After it, the tool remembers you and never asks again.

Choose your chats

It lists your chats with message counts.
Type the exact name of each chat you want, one per line.
Press Enter on a blank line when you're done.

Save and finish

Where to save: press Enter to accept the default, or paste a folder path.
Voice notes: press Enter for yes (they'll be transcribed automatically).

When it finishes, it tells you exactly where your files are.

The whole thing at a glance

What happens, start to finish

Unzip the file
   → Open Terminal
      → cd into the folder  (type "cd ", drag folder, Enter)
         → bash telegram-install.sh
            → phone number  +  login code (from inside Telegram)
               → pick your chats
                  → one file per chat, text + transcribed voice notes
                     → done, it shows you where

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If anything stops or shows an error: just run bash telegram-install.sh again. It is completely safe to re-run and picks up right where it left off.

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Privacy. Everything runs on your Mac and nothing is uploaded. Only the chats you name get imported. If you pick a group chat, it includes the other people's messages too, so choose the ones you actually want.