Developer Builds Tool to Make Three Years of Telegram Group Chat Searchable

A developer has created a system to make a large Telegram group chat history queryable by exporting and converting it into structured documents. The process involved handling two export formats — JSON and paginated HTML — each with distinct parsing challenges, including inconsistent date formats between Telegram Desktop and macOS clients. Key technical hurdles included sticky sender names, nested forwarded message authors, and efficiently packing content within NotebookLM's 500,000-word-per-source limit. To avoid reprocessing old messages on repeat exports, the tool stores state in destination filenames rather than a local watermark, using the last known message as a cursor. The project was built to make years of accumulated group knowledge actually accessible and searchable rather than buried in an unnavigable chat history.
This is an AI-generated summary. ShortSingh links to the original source for the complete article.
Discussion (0)
Log in to join the discussion and vote.
Log in