xthread

Prints an X/Twitter thread, or a tweet with its full X Article, from a tweet URL as plain text or JSON. Single tweets and articles need no login. Full threads need the cookies of a throwaway account. No API key, no dependencies.

$ xthread https://x.com/posthog/status/2109706421919248499
1. @posthog — Mon Oct 12 18:03:02 +0000 2026
   We have built 10 different AI products at PostHog ... Here are the 38 most important lessons:
   likes=1582 retweets=98 replies=27 bookmarks=4471 quotes=53 views=229301

2. @posthog — Mon Oct 12 18:03:04 +0000 2026
   1. AI can make your product worse. It can be slow and unreliable, ...
...
40. @posthog — Mon Oct 12 18:04:56 +0000 2026
   Subscribe for more lessons like these: https://posthog.com/newsletter

Setup

uv tool install xthread-cli    # or: pipx install xthread-cli
xthread https://x.com/chhddavid/status/2100537116635672690

Usage

xthread <tweet-url>            # plain text (default)
xthread <tweet-url> --json
xthread <url-or-raw-id> --timeout 30

It accepts https://x.com/<user>/status/<id>, https://twitter.com/... or a raw numeric ID. stdout holds data only. Errors go to stderr.

What you get

Input	Without cookies	With cookies
Single tweet	The tweet and its stats	Same
Long post (over 280 characters)	Full text	Same
X Article	Full article text	Same
Multi-tweet thread	First tweet only	Every tweet in the thread, oldest first
Photos, videos, GIFs	URLs	Same

Links are expanded from t.co to the real URL. In plain output the stats line shows on the first tweet only. In --json output every tweet is in thread.tweets.

Media

xthread prints the URLs of photos, videos and GIFs. It does not download them. Use curl -O <url> for that.

Lines from real threads, printed under their tweet:

   [photo] https://pbs.twimg.com/media/HUcvAlGa8AAmyVK.jpg?name=orig
   [video 0:58] https://video.twimg.com/amplify_video/2107400232904355841/vid/avc1/1280x588/oMK57WldoEUsd-bF.mp4?tag=29

When the author wrote alt text, an alt: ... line follows.

• Photo: the full-size file (?name=orig).
• Video and GIF: the MP4 with the highest bitrate. X serves GIFs as MP4. The HLS playlist (.m3u8) is skipped.
• JSON: each tweet has a media list. Each item has type (photo, video or gif) and url. Videos and GIFs also have thumbnail and duration_ms. alt_text is set when the author wrote one.
• The pic.x.com link that X adds to the tweet text is removed, because the media list replaces it.
• Quoted tweets and link cards are not read yet.

Thread walk

X only answers the thread call (TweetDetail) to a logged-in session. To read full threads:

1. Make a new X account. Do not use your main account. X can lock accounts that scrape.
2. Sign in to it in a normal browser.
3. Export the x.com cookies as a Netscape cookies.txt, with any cookie-export extension.
4. Save the file as ~/.config/xthread/cookies.txt, or set XTHREAD_COOKIES to its path.
5. Run chmod 600 on the file. It holds a login token. Do not commit it or share it.

xthread uses only auth_token and ct0 from the file. It follows the "show more" pages and keeps the replies of the first author in a chain. Replies from other users and promoted tweets are skipped. If the author replied twice to one tweet, only the earlier branch is followed.

Checked on 2026-10-17: a 40-tweet thread and a 76-tweet thread. Both gave the same tweet counts as twitter-thread.com.

If X rejects the cookies (expired, or the account is locked), xthread exits with code 5 and prints the reason. It never prints a partial thread as if it were complete.

Exit codes

Code	Meaning
0	Success. A thread or an article was printed.
1	Bad or missing arguments.
2	One tweet, no article. It is still printed. This is also the result for a thread when no cookies file exists.
3	Tweet not found.
4	Network error or timeout.
5	X rejected the request: rate limit, bad cookies, or an unexpected response.

How it works

Single tweets and articles use X's guest API. The public web client contains a fixed bearer token. xthread sends it to guest/activate.json for a guest token. It then calls TweetResultByRestId with withArticlePlainText=true, which returns the tweet and any article body in one request.

Threads use TweetDetail with your session cookies. The query ID of that call changes every few weeks. xthread has one built in. When X answers 400 or 404, it reads the current ID from the main.js file that x.com serves, and retries once.

Limits

• This is a reverse-engineered use of X's web API. It is not an official API. X can change it at any time, and then xthread breaks until it is updated.
• Public tweets only. Private accounts and deleted tweets are not available.
• Use light, occasional reads. X rate-limits both the guest path and the session. A 429 gives exit code 5.
• Thread reading depends on one throwaway account. If X locks it, make a new one and export new cookies.

Development

git clone https://github.com/ekinertac/xthread && cd xthread
python3 -m unittest discover -s tests

The tests need no network and no account. The fixture is a saved TweetDetail response with public tweets. Python 3.9 or newer.

License

MIT