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Telegram Bot Creation Guide

To use paperless-genie, you need to register a new bot with Telegram and obtain a Telegram Bot Token.

πŸ€– Step-by-Step Registration

  1. Find BotFather: Open Telegram and search for @BotFather (the official bot used to create and manage other bots).
  2. Create New Bot: Send the /newbot command to BotFather.
  3. Choose Name: BotFather will ask for a name. Enter a friendly name for your bot (e.g., Paperless Genie).
  4. Choose Username: Choose a unique username that ends with bot (e.g., my_paperless_archive_bot).
  5. Get Token: Once created, BotFather will message you a HTTP API Token (e.g., 123456789:ABCdefGhIJKlmNoPQRsTUVwxyZ). Copy this token; you will need it for the TELEGRAM_BOT_TOKEN environment variable.

πŸ”’ Get Your Telegram User ID

Since paperless-genie only responds to authorized users, you need to find your Telegram User ID:

  1. Search for @userinfobot or @GetIDsBot in Telegram.
  2. Start a conversation with it.
  3. It will reply with your unique Id (a numeric value like 52966251).
  4. Keep this ID handy; you will map it to your Paperless API Token in the configuration step.