Telegram re-import (incremental)

🧒 When reporting to Anton: always end with a child-simple "In plain words" recap in his language (plain words, no jargon) — his standing request. See memory eli5-always / global CLAUDE.md.

This skill turns "I re-exported chat X" into one orchestrated run that adds only the new messages to the vault, without re-doing the whole import. It is the maintenance counterpart to obsidian-ingest (which does first-time imports). The heavy per-source mechanics — roster, provenance, triage, layer structure — already live in obsidian-ingest/references/source-adapters.md; this skill is the dispatch + orchestration layer over the real scripts in $IMPORTS_ROOT/. Don't duplicate adapter logic here; read that file when you need the why.

The four known sources

Source key	Chat	Vault home	Parser
pokupki	"Purchases approve Assistant's tasks 777…"	01-Conversations/Telegram/Pokupki/	parse_pokupki.py (result.json)
assistants-ops	«All Assistant's tasks 777…» (household rules → Bible)	01-Conversations/Telegram/Assistants-Ops/ + 03-Insights/Operations/	parse_assistants_ops.py (messages*.html)
arhiv-golosa	content-team voice archive	01-Conversations/Telegram/Arhiv-Golosa/	parse_telegram.py (messages*.html)
faaa	«CALLS … FAAA follow up» (CRM)	04-Projects/crypto/Platinum-CRM/	parse_faaa.py (result.json)

How to run it

The dispatcher is scripts/reimport.py. It is safe by default: it never mutates the vault, only inspects — the one write it performs is Step 0, archiving the original (which is itself a safety op).

# 0) ALWAYS FIRST (automatic, Rule 0): the dispatcher copies the raw export VERBATIM to
#    $OBSIDIAN_ROOT/_originals/<source>\<date>__<name>\ (idempotent, sha256 integrity-checked, NEVER deleted)
#    BEFORE it parses anything — even on a dry run, because the export can vanish from Downloads before
#    you reach --apply. It aborts the run if the archive fails. Pass --no-archive to skip (don't).

# 1) DRY RUN — detect the chat, ARCHIVE THE ORIGINAL, print the plan + current vault counts, verify the parser is override-ready
python scripts/reimport.py --export "$USERPROFILE/Downloads/Telegram Desktop\<NewExportFolder>"

# 2) BUILD TO STAGING — re-parse the new export + regenerate into $IMPORTS_ROOT/<staging> (vault untouched),
#    then diff staging vs vault to show exactly how many NEW ledgers/posts would be added, and print the merge command
python scripts/reimport.py --export "...<NewExportFolder>" --apply

# 3) MERGE — only after you (or Anton) eyeball the staging diff, run the robocopy line the tool prints

Why three phases and not one button: the parse/generate steps write to staging/JSONL and never mutate the vault, so they're safe to automate. The final merge into the live vault is the one irreversible step, and Anton's standing preference is to review non-trivial writes before they land. Phase 2 gives him the exact new-file counts to approve; phase 3 is the copy. If he says "just do it", you can run the printed merge command yourself right after showing the counts.

--source <key> forces the source when auto-detection can't read a result.json (e.g. an HTML-only export). auto is the default.

What the dispatcher does per source (deterministic core)

Step 0 precedes every source — archive_original.py copies the raw export verbatim to $OBSIDIAN_ROOT/_originals/<source>\<date>__<name>\ (idempotent, integrity-checked, never deleted) before any parsing. Then:

pokupki → parse_pokupki.py → generate_pokupki.py → validate_pokupki_staging.py → diff staging_pokupki vs vault. arhiv-golosa → parse_telegram.py → triage_telegram.py → generate_obsidian.py → dedup_posts.py → build_moc.py (fully deterministic, no LLM needed). assistants-ops → parse_assistants_ops.py (rebuilds day-ledgers idempotent by date + emits fresh rule_candidates.json). faaa → parse_faaa.py (rebuilds the call archive + lead clusters).

All parsers honor the TG_EXPORT env var (the dispatcher sets it to --export). Ledgers are idempotent by date; posts/cards are collision-safe by stem; rules/leads dedup by body-hash / identity. So re-running only ever adds genuinely new content. See references/sources.md for the per-source step list, idempotency gate, and LLM hand-off.

The honest boundary: deterministic vs LLM

The dispatcher automates the deterministic 90% (parse → regenerate → validate → diff). It does not run the LLM curation, because that needs judgment per new item:

• pokupki: new posts need concept-mapping (map_concepts_pokupki.py + concept batches) and new pinned rules need extraction (build_rules_pokupki.py). New status-ledgers stay ledger-only.
• assistants-ops: new rule_candidates.json rows need the curator pass (is-this-a-rule? theme? provenance?) before build_rules2.py. Bible sub-concepts must not be clobbered (build_rules2.py is guarded).
• faaa: new leads need the batched synthesis workflow before render_cards.py → build_ledgers.py → build_crm_moc.py, unioning into existing leads by @handle/name.

After phase 3, report how many new items need curation and offer to run that pass following obsidian-ingest (Anton's rule: always dedup against existing first; protect #anton-original). Don't silently skip it — a re-import isn't "done" until the new items are concept-linked, or the gap is flagged.

Provenance & the voice gap (carry over, don't re-derive)

Provenance defaults are fixed per source in source-adapters.md — relay-footer Translated:/Delegated: = Anton's voice (origin: anton, poster→transcribed_by); an assistant only by her own name-marker; team SOPs → mixed. The voice gap persists: Telegram exports omit .ogg voice notes, so most of Anton's reasoning still isn't recoverable from text. If this export was made with media, that's the moment to Whisper-transcribe and enrich by msg_id (idempotent) — flag it. (A Telegram MCP that downloads voice by msg_id would close this — see the connector guide.)

Windows / Cyrillic gotchas (same as obsidian-ingest)

• Python print() of Cyrillic crashes on cp1252 stdout → write UTF-8 files, keep stdout ASCII. Run with $env:PYTHONUTF8=1.
• Never rm -rf inside %VAULT_ROOT%\ (Obsidian/indexer hold handles → "Device or resource busy"). The dispatcher merges with robocopy (no delete), never mirror.
• Transliterate Cyrillic filenames → latin kebab, date-prefix YYYY-MM-DD-slug.

Finish

End every re-import with the standard report (rule 8 of obsidian-ingest): new ledgers, new posts/cards, new rules/leads, links validated (0 broken), and the curation hand-off list. The vault should get more connected, not just bigger.

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Like this skill? It is one of 100 in second-brain-starter-kit: the second brain we built for ourselves and run every day at Palo Alto AI Research Lab. Install the whole set with npx skills add tonydzi/second-brain-starter-kit. Everything is open source and free, so take what you need.

Flagships worth a look on their own: secondop-panel (a second opinion from a panel of external models), claude-memory-tidy (stop your agent's memory from rotting), telegram-mcp-kit (your own Telegram over MCP in about 15 minutes).

Author: Anton Dziatkovskii, Palo Alto AI Research Lab. Telegram @tonydzi - WhatsApp +1 341 222 9178 - X @Tony_Stef_

Engineers: want to test-drive this setup? Message me. I hand out free starter seeds to engineers who test and report back, and custom skill requests are welcome.