Twitter Reader

Fetch Twitter/X post and article content with full media support.

Reading a single post's text: fxtwitter first (2026-08-30)

For plain post text, prefer the fxtwitter mirror API — login-free, key-free, works direct, and returns the full note_tweet body in tweet.text (the full_text key does not exist; a 2,324-char long-form announcement came back complete):

curl -sS --max-time 20 "https://api.fxtwitter.com/<user>/status/<id>" \
  | python3 -c "import json,sys; t=json.load(sys.stdin)['tweet']; print(t['created_at']); print(t['text'])"

replies is a count, not the reply thread. For X Articles with images, use fetch_article.py below — fxtwitter does not carry article bodies.

Quick Start (Recommended)

For X Articles with images, use the new fetch_article.py script:

uv run --with pyyaml python scripts/fetch_article.py <article_url> [output_dir]

Example:

uv run --with pyyaml python scripts/fetch_article.py \
  https://x.com/HiTw93/status/2040047268221608281 \
  ./Clippings

This will:

• Fetch structured data via twitter-cli (likes, retweets, bookmarks)
• Fetch content with images via jina.ai API
• Download all images to attachments/YYYY-MM-DD-AUTHOR-TITLE/
• Generate complete Markdown with embedded image references
• Include YAML frontmatter with metadata

Example Output

Fetching: https://x.com/HiTw93/status/2040047268221608281
--------------------------------------------------
Getting metadata...
Title: 你不知道的大模型训练：原理、路径与新实践
Author: Tw93
Likes: 1648

Getting content and images...
Images: 15

Downloading 15 images...
  ✓ 01-image.jpg
  ✓ 02-image.jpg
  ...

✓ Saved: ./Clippings/2026-04-03-文章标题.md
✓ Images: ./Clippings/attachments/2026-04-03-HiTw93-.../ (15 downloaded)

Alternative: Jina API (Text-only)

⚠️ Known reliability risk (2026-08-30 live tests): anonymous r.jina.ai access to x.com gets 403-globally-banned for hours when third-party users abuse the domain — the ban blocks every anonymous caller, then expires. Verified working again after expiry (anonymous fetch then returns post text), so treat Jina as intermittent, never a load-bearing path. The shared key in this repo is also currently out of balance (402 InsufficientBalanceError), which makes fetch_tweets.sh — it hard-requires JINA_API_KEY — unusable until recharged.

For simple text-only fetching:

# Single tweet
curl "https://r.jina.ai/https://x.com/USER/status/TWEET_ID" \
  -H "Authorization: Bearer ${JINA_API_KEY}"

# Batch fetching
scripts/fetch_tweets.sh url1 url2 url3

Features

Full Article Mode (fetch_article.py)

• ✅ Structured metadata (author, date, engagement metrics)
• ✅ Automatic image download (all embedded media)
• ✅ Complete Markdown with local image references
• ✅ YAML frontmatter for PKM systems
• ✅ Handles X Articles (long-form content)

Simple Mode (Jina API)

• Text-only content
• Intermittent availability (see risk note above); batch script hard-requires JINA_API_KEY
• Good for quick text extraction when it's up

Prerequisites

For Full Article Mode

• uv (Python package manager)
• No additional setup (twitter-cli auto-installed)

For Simple Mode (Jina)

export JINA_API_KEY="your_api_key_here"
# Get from https://jina.ai/

Output Structure

output_dir/
├── YYYY-MM-DD-article-title.md       # Main Markdown file
└── attachments/
    └── YYYY-MM-DD-author-title/
        ├── 01-image.jpg
        ├── 02-image.jpg
        └── ...

What Gets Returned

Full Article Mode

• YAML Frontmatter: source, author, date, likes, retweets, bookmarks
• Markdown Content: Full article text with local image references
• Attachments: All downloaded images in dedicated folder

Simple Mode

• Title: Post author and content preview
• URL Source: Original tweet link
• Published Time: GMT timestamp
• Markdown Content: Text with remote media URLs

URL Formats Supported

• https://x.com/USER/status/ID (posts)
• https://x.com/USER/article/ID (long-form articles)
• https://twitter.com/USER/status/ID (legacy)

Scripts

fetch_article.py

Full-featured article fetcher with image download:

uv run --with pyyaml python scripts/fetch_article.py <url> [output_dir]

fetch_tweet.py

Simple text-only fetcher using Jina API:

python scripts/fetch_tweet.py <tweet_url> [output_file]

fetch_tweets.sh

Batch fetch multiple tweets (Jina API):

scripts/fetch_tweets.sh <url1> <url2> ...

Migration from Jina API

Old workflow:

curl "https://r.jina.ai/https://x.com/..."
# Manual image extraction and download

New workflow:

uv run --with pyyaml python scripts/fetch_article.py <url>
# Automatic image download, complete Markdown