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

bash

bird read <tweet-url-or-id>

Example:

bash

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

Read a full thread

bash

bird thread <tweet-url-or-id>

View replies to a tweet

bash

bird replies <tweet-url-or-id>

Searching

Search tweets

bash

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

bash

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

Check mentions

bash

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

View timeline

bash

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

View bookmarks

bash

bird bookmarks

View likes

bash

bird likes

Posting

Post a new tweet

bash

bird tweet "Your tweet text here"

Reply to a tweet

bash

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

Post with media

bash

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

bash

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

Following

Follow a user

bash

bird follow <username>

Unfollow a user

bash

bird unfollow <username>

See who you follow

bash

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

See your followers

bash

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

Account Info

Check current account

bash

bird whoami

Get info about a user

bash

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

bash

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

Find recent tweets about a topic

bash

bird search "Claude AI" --limit 10

Check what someone's been posting

bash

bird user-tweets anthroploic --limit 5

Reply to a tweet

bash

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

bash

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

Returns:

json

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

To actually view images

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

Quick one-liner to download all images

bash

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