Telegram photo post API

Post a photo with a caption to a Telegram channel or group through an API or MCP server: the 5 MB and 1,024-character limits, example requests, and errors with fixes.

Beta: you can connect a Telegram account and post to it through the API in early access today. It hasn't been proven with a real production post yet. The @turboyap/sdk and @turboyap/mcp packages call the same API. Test mode runs the same requests against a simulated Telegram account.

What a Telegram photo post is

A Telegram photo post is one image with a caption of up to 1,024 characters, sent to a channel or group with the Bot API's sendPhoto. In Turboyap it's type: "image" with one media id.

Turboyap hosts the image, converts and resizes it to fit Telegram's limits, and Telegram fetches it from Turboyap's media URL when the post goes out.

Limits

What Telegram accepts for this post type. Turboyap's planner checks every one of these before a post is scheduled (the same data as platform rules), and each value links to the Telegram documentation it comes from.

Compare with other platforms in the social media API limits tracker.

Connect a Telegram account

1. In Telegram, open your channel or group, then Administrators, then Add Admin, and choose the Turboyap bot. The connect page and GET /v1/connect_methods show its exact @username.
2. Give it permission to post messages (channels) or send messages (groups). It needs nothing else.
3. Connect the channel's public @username or t.me link. For a private channel, use its numeric chat ID: open it in Telegram Web (web.telegram.org/a) and copy the number after # in the address bar. It starts with -100.

Turboyap checks that the bot can post there before it saves the account. A human with a live key can connect directly with POST /v1/accounts and { "platform": "telegram", "chat": "@yourchannel" }. Turboyap posts to channels and groups, not to private chats with a person.

An agent never handles the account's credentials: it calls the create_connect_link MCP tool (or POST /v1/connect_links with the platform) and sends the 7-day link to the person who owns the account, whose page walks them through these steps. New accounts start on autonomy level 1, so agent posts wait for approval.

Example requests

All three do the same thing: upload the media, preview the post with a dry run, then schedule it. The idempotency key makes retries safe: send the same request again with the same key and you get the original post back, not a second one.

Early access: api.turboyap.com is open to early-access users only, and @turboyap/sdk and @turboyap/mcp aren't on npm yet. These examples show the API as built.

curl

# 1. Upload each image. The body is the raw file; Content-Type is its type.
curl https://api.turboyap.com/v1/media \
  -H "Authorization: Bearer $TURBOYAP_API_KEY" \
  -H "Content-Type: image/png" \
  -H "X-Filename: slide-1.png" \
  --data-binary @slide-1.png
# → { "media": { "id": "med_…", "width": 1080, "height": 1920, … }, "deduplicated": false }

# 2. Preview. Remove "dry_run" to create and schedule the post.
curl https://api.turboyap.com/v1/posts \
  -H "Authorization: Bearer $TURBOYAP_API_KEY" \
  -H "Content-Type: application/json" \
  -d '{
    "type": "image",
    "media_ids": ["med_…"],
    "caption": "Read the label before you buy.",
    "targets": [{ "account_id": "acct_telegram…" }],
    "schedule_at": "2026-10-20T18:00:00-04:00",
    "fit": { "aspect": "pad" },
    "idempotency_key": "telegram-photo-2026-10-20",
    "dry_run": true
  }'

TypeScript with @turboyap/sdk

import { readFile } from "node:fs/promises";
import { TurboyapClient } from "@turboyap/sdk";

const ty = new TurboyapClient({ apiKey: process.env.TURBOYAP_API_KEY! });
const account = (await ty.listAccounts()).find((a) => a.platform === "telegram")!;

const media_ids: string[] = [];
for (const file of ["image.png"]) {
  const { media } = await ty.uploadMedia(await readFile(file), { filename: file, contentType: "image/png" });
  media_ids.push(media.id);
}

const post = {
  type: "image" as const,
  media_ids,
  caption: "Read the label before you buy.",
  targets: [{ account_id: account.id }],
  schedule_at: "2026-10-20T18:00:00-04:00",
  fit: { aspect: "pad" as const },
  idempotency_key: "telegram-photo-2026-10-20",
};

// Preview first: every problem comes back with a fix.
const preview = await ty.createPost({ ...post, dry_run: true });
if (!preview.ok) throw new Error(preview.errors.map((e) => `${e.code}: ${e.fix}`).join("\n"));

const { post: created } = await ty.createPost(post);
console.log(created.targets[0]?.status, created.targets[0]?.next_step);

Claude Code (MCP)

Add the Turboyap MCP server once, with an agent key from your workspace:

claude mcp add turboyap -e TURBOYAP_API_KEY=ty_agent_… -- npx -y @turboyap/mcp

Then ask:

Post ~/content/label-check.png to our Telegram channel tomorrow at 8am ET with the caption "Read the label before you buy." Dry-run first.

The agent calls list_accounts, get_platform_rules, upload_media, create_post with dry_run: true, applies any fixes, calls create_post again to schedule, and reports each account's next_step from get_post. The same server works in Cursor; see the MCP quickstart.

How publishing works

When the scheduled time arrives, Turboyap's bot sends the post with sendPhoto, and Telegram fetches the photo from Turboyap's media URL. Publishing is immediate: the target moves scheduled → publishing → published. platform_url links to the message in channels and supergroups; basic groups have no message links. Telegram's Bot API has no idempotency key, so if a response is lost Turboyap marks the target unknown_outcome instead of posting again.

Text posts take 4,096 characters; captions on photos and albums take 1,024.

Pass link on a text post to choose which URL gets the link preview.

Video and documents aren't supported yet: Turboyap's media pipeline takes images only.

Common errors and fixes

Every error has a code, the field that caused it, and a fix an agent can apply without asking you. A request with several problems returns all of them in issues; a dry run returns them without creating anything.

Errors from Telegram itself appear on the target's error with Telegram's own code. Turboyap retries rate limits and temporary failures with backoff, and marks the account for reconnection when the bot can no longer post to the chat.

Approval and audit

• Level 1, review everything (default): a post an agent schedules starts as pending_approval and waits until a human approves it with a human key (POST /v1/posts/:id/approve). Agent keys can't approve.
• Level 3, full autopilot: agent posts schedule directly. Every action is still logged. Level 2, guardrails, is coming soon.
• Posts created by humans schedule directly at any level.
• Edits re-open review: if an agent changes the caption or time of an approved post on a level-1 account, it goes back to pending_approval.
• Dry runs show the outcome: each target's status_on_create tells the agent whether the post will wait for approval.
• Audit log: every create, approval, edit, publish and failure is recorded with whether a human or an agent did it, the key id, and the MCP client name. The kill switch (POST /v1/workspace/pause) stops every publish to Telegram and every other platform at once.

Read more in the autonomy dial.

FAQ

Related

• Telegram text message API (beta)
• Telegram album API (beta)
• TikTok photo post API
• Instagram image post API
• Bluesky image post API (beta)
• Discord image message API (beta)
• Post one slideshow to TikTok and Instagram
• REST API reference
• Platform rules
• Social media API limits tracker

This page as markdown: /api/telegram/photo.md. Everything for LLMs: /llms.txt.