Browsing Twitter/X

Use the bird CLI to interact with Twitter/X through Michael's authenticated Chrome session. This bypasses API restrictions since it uses browser cookies.

When to Use

• Read a tweet by URL or ID
• Search for tweets on a topic
• View a full thread/conversation
• Check mentions or replies
• Post a new tweet
• Reply to an existing tweet
• View someone's timeline
• Check bookmarks or likes

Reading Tweets

Read a single tweet

bird read <tweet-url-or-id>

Example:

bird read https://x.com/username/status/1234567890
bird read 1234567890

Read a full thread

bird thread <tweet-url-or-id>

View replies to a tweet

bird replies <tweet-url-or-id>

Searching

Search tweets

bird search "query"
bird search "from:username keyword"
bird search "#hashtag"

Options:

• --limit <n> - Number of results (default: 20)

User Content

Get someone's tweets

bird user-tweets <handle>
bird user-tweets elonmusk --limit 10

Check mentions

bird mentions                    # Your mentions
bird mentions --user <handle>    # Someone else's mentions

View timeline

bird home                        # Your "For You" feed
bird home --limit 20

View bookmarks

bird bookmarks

View likes

bird likes

Posting

Post a new tweet

bird tweet "Your tweet text here"

Reply to a tweet

bird reply <tweet-id-or-url> "Your reply text"

Post with media

bird tweet "Check this out" --media /path/to/image.png
bird tweet "Multiple images" --media img1.png --media img2.png

Add alt text to media

bird tweet "Accessible tweet" --media photo.jpg --alt "Description of the image"

Following

Follow a user

bird follow <username>

Unfollow a user

bird unfollow <username>

See who you follow

bird following
bird following --user <handle>  # Who someone else follows

See your followers

bird followers
bird followers --user <handle>  # Someone else's followers

Account Info

Check current account

bird whoami

Get info about a user

bird about <username>

Output Options

Flag	Description
--plain	Plain output (no emoji, no color) - good for parsing
--no-emoji	Disable emoji
--no-color	Disable ANSI colors
--quote-depth <n>	Max quoted tweet depth (default: 1)

Examples

Read and summarize a tweet

bird read https://x.com/theonejvo/status/2015892980851474595

Find recent tweets about a topic

bird search "Claude AI" --limit 10

Check what someone's been posting

bird user-tweets anthroploic --limit 5

Reply to a tweet

bird reply 1234567890 "Great thread! Thanks for sharing."

Viewing Images in Tweets

The plain text output doesn't show images, but JSON output includes media URLs.

Get image URLs from a tweet

bird read <url> --json | jq '.media'

Returns:

[
  {
    "type": "photo",
    "url": "https://pbs.twimg.com/media/xxxxx.png",
    "width": 665,
    "height": 407
  }
]

To actually view images

1. Get the URL: bird read <url> --json | jq -r '.media[0].url'
2. Download: curl -sL "<url>" -o /tmp/tweet-image.png
3. View with Read tool: Read /tmp/tweet-image.png

Quick one-liner to download all images

bird read <url> --json | jq -r '.media[].url' | while read url; do
  curl -sL "$url" -o "/tmp/tweet-$(basename $url)"
done

Notes

• Uses Michael's Chrome session cookies - no API key needed
• Bypasses X's restrictions on unauthenticated access
• Rate limits are browser-based, not API-based
• All interactions appear as Michael's account
• For posting, be mindful this is Michael's real account