Telethon Session Generator

Generate a .session file to authenticate a Telegram user account via Telethon, and use that session to send and read messages.

One-time initialization (required)

Before any send/read tasks, the user must do a one-time login to create a reusable .session file.

1. Install deps (recommended in a venv):

apt install python3.13-venv
python3 -m venv venv
source venv/bin/activate
pip install -U pip
pip install telethon

2. Create .env interactively:

bash scripts/setup_env.sh

3. Login once to generate the session file:

set -a && source .env && set +a
python3 scripts/login.py

login.py now supports this precedence:

• command-line flags
• environment variables (TELEGRAM_API_ID, TELEGRAM_API_HASH, TELEGRAM_PHONE, TELETHON_SESSION)
• interactive prompts

So after loading .env, you usually do not need to pass --api-id, --api-hash, --phone, or --session manually.

If needed, you can still override env vars explicitly:

python3 scripts/login.py --session other_session
python3 scripts/login.py --api-id 12345 --api-hash "..." --phone "+8613..."

Steps 2 and 3 are required. Prefer asking the user to run them locally. Only run them on the user’s behalf if the user explicitly requests it and provides the required values.

Stop condition: if .env or *.session is missing, do not attempt send/read. Ask the user to complete the steps above.

Day-to-day actions

All actions assume:

• you are in this skill directory
• venv is activated
• env vars loaded from .env

Load env vars:

set -a && source .env && set +a

Send a message (scripts/send.py)

python3 scripts/send.py --to @username --message "hi"

Read recent messages (scripts/read.py)

python3 scripts/read.py --with @username --limit 10

Notes / safety

• Treat .session like a password. Do not commit it.
• This is for user-account login (Telethon session). Not for bot-token bots.
• If Telegram invalidates the session, rerun the login step to regenerate it.

Minimal code example

from telethon import TelegramClient

client = TelegramClient('telegram_session', api_id, api_hash)
await client.start()

Repository references

• Extra details live in references.md.
• Scripts live in scripts/.