How to Build a Telegram Daily Digest with OpenClaw

What You'll Build

An automated Telegram digest workflow that:

1. Collects messages from your Telegram groups and channels
2. Summarizes conversations using AI to extract key points, decisions, and action items
3. Delivers a digest on a schedule you define — daily, twice a day, or weekly
4. Filters noise so you only see what matters, not every single message

By the end of this guide, you'll have a bot that reads your Telegram groups and sends you a clean summary every morning — no more scrolling through hundreds of messages.

Why Automate Telegram Digests

Telegram groups are great for real-time communication, but they create a real problem at scale:

• Message overload — active groups generate hundreds of messages per day, most of which are not relevant to you
• FOMO scrolling — you feel compelled to read everything in case you miss something important
• Context switching — checking Telegram repeatedly throughout the day breaks your focus
• Lost decisions — important decisions and action items get buried in casual conversation
• Time zones — if your team spans multiple time zones, catching up on overnight messages takes 20-30 minutes every morning

An AI-powered digest solves this by reading everything for you and surfacing only what matters. You get a 2-minute read instead of a 30-minute scroll.

Prerequisites

• OpenClaw installed and configured (Getting Started Guide)
• Telegram Bot Token — create one via @BotFather
• Node.js 18+

Step 1: Install the Required Skills

# 1. Telegram integration
npx clawhub@latest install telegram

# 2. AI summarization
npx clawhub@latest install summarize

# 3. Scheduled task runner
npx clawhub@latest install cron

Verify installation:

clawhub list

Step 2: Configure Telegram Access

Create a Telegram Bot

1. Open Telegram and message @BotFather
2. Send /newbot and follow the prompts
3. Copy the bot token (looks like 123456:ABC-DEF1234ghIkl-zyx57W2v1u123ew11)

Configure in OpenClaw

clawhub inspect telegram

Set your bot token when prompted. The Telegram skill provides templates for interacting with the Telegram Bot API via HTTPS requests — OpenClaw's agent uses these to read and send messages on your behalf.

Add the Bot to Your Groups

Add your bot to each Telegram group you want to monitor. The bot needs read access to collect messages. To find a group's chat ID, add the bot to the group and send a message — the Telegram Bot API returns the chat ID in the response.

Step 3: Configure the Digest Schedule

Use the Cron skill to schedule your digest:

# Daily digest at 9:00 AM
clawhub run cron --schedule "0 9 * * *" --task "telegram-digest"

# Twice daily — morning and evening
clawhub run cron --schedule "0 9,18 * * *" --task "telegram-digest"

# Weekly digest every Monday at 9:00 AM
clawhub run cron --schedule "0 9 * * 1" --task "telegram-digest"

Step 4: Test Your Digest

Run the digest workflow by asking OpenClaw to collect and summarize your Telegram messages. The agent uses the Telegram skill to fetch messages via the Bot API and the Summarize skill to generate the digest.

Here's an example of what the output looks like:

=== Telegram Daily Digest ===
Date: 2026-03-31

## Engineering Team (47 messages)

### Key Decisions
- Agreed to migrate auth service to gRPC by end of Q2
- New API rate limits approved: 1000 req/min for free tier

### Action Items
- @alice: Update the deployment docs by Friday
- @bob: Review PR #234 for the caching layer
- @carol: Schedule load testing for next week

### Notable Discussions
- Debate on whether to adopt ScyllaDB — leaning toward a pilot test
- Discussion about flaky CI tests — root cause identified as race condition in test fixtures

---

## Product Updates (12 messages)

### Key Points
- v2.3 release scheduled for April 5
- New onboarding flow A/B test results: 23% improvement in activation
- Customer feedback: top request is webhook support

### Action Items
- @dave: Write changelog for v2.3
- @eve: Create Jira tickets for webhook feature

---

## General Discussion (83 messages)

### Highlights
- Team lunch moved to Thursday
- Office WiFi upgrade completed
- Conference talk proposals due April 10

Step 5: Customize the Summary Format

Priority-Based Filtering

Configure the summarizer to prioritize certain types of content:

summary:
  priorities:
    - decisions
    - action_items
    - mentions_of_me
    - deadlines
  ignore:
    - emoji_reactions_only
    - forwarded_memes
    - bot_messages

Custom Delivery Channel

By default, the digest is sent back via Telegram DM. You can also configure it to:

• Send to a specific Telegram channel
• Output as a Markdown file
• Forward to email (combine with the email skill)

Advanced: Multi-Group Digest with Priorities

For users monitoring many groups, configure priority levels:

groups:
  high_priority:
    - "Engineering Team"
    - "Incident Response"
  medium_priority:
    - "Product Updates"
    - "Design Reviews"
  low_priority:
    - "General Discussion"
    - "Random"

digest:
  high_priority: full_summary
  medium_priority: key_points_only
  low_priority: one_line_summary

This ensures your digest stays concise even when monitoring 10+ groups.

Troubleshooting

Bot not receiving messages

• Ensure the bot is added to the group as a member
• Check that the bot has permission to read messages (group privacy settings)
• Verify the chat ID is correct — ask OpenClaw to list your accessible chats using the Telegram skill

Empty digest / "No messages found"

• Check the time window — by default, the digest collects messages from the last 24 hours
• Verify the group actually had activity in that period
• Ensure your API credentials are valid: clawhub inspect telegram

Digest arrives at the wrong time

• Check your system timezone: date +%Z
• Cron schedules use your system's local time by default
• Set an explicit timezone in the cron configuration if needed

Rate limiting errors

• Telegram API has rate limits — if you monitor many large groups, space out collection
• The skill handles rate limiting automatically, but very large groups (1000+ messages/day) may need the collection window split into smaller chunks