X Thread Reader
Fetch full text or generate a PDF from any X/Twitter thread via twitter-thread.com.
How It Works
Text mode: curl the twitter-thread.com /pdf/{tweet_id} page. The full article is embedded in the HTML <meta name="description"> tag — no browser or JS rendering needed. Fast, reliable, zero dependencies beyond curl and python3.
PDF mode: Uses Chrome headless (--print-to-pdf) or agent-browser to render and save the PDF. Browser required because the PDF generation page uses JS.
Limitations
- Requires the thread to be indexed on twitter-thread.com — if not indexed, visit the thread URL in a browser first to trigger indexing
- Does NOT work for X Articles (
x.com/i/article/...) — those require a logged-in browser - Does NOT work for protected/private accounts or deleted tweets
Quick Usage
Get full thread text
scripts/x_thread.sh text "https://x.com/user/status/1234567890"
Download PDF
scripts/x_thread.sh pdf "https://x.com/user/status/1234567890"
# Custom output path:
scripts/x_thread.sh pdf "https://x.com/user/status/1234567890" "/tmp/my-thread.pdf"
Accepts full X/Twitter URL or raw tweet ID.
Output Format
The text mode outputs structured content:
- Author and date from the thread
- Full article text — complete thread content, all tweets concatenated
- Source URL for citation
Suitable for archiving to Obsidian, note-taking apps, or further analysis.
Gotchas
- The
/pdf/{id}URL returns HTML (not a PDF) — the article is in the<meta name="description">tag, extracted via python3. If twitter-thread.com changes their HTML structure, this extraction breaks silently (empty output). - Thread must be indexed on twitter-thread.com first. Fresh threads (< 30 min old) may not be available yet. The
/t/{id}page triggers indexing when visited in a browser. - macOS grep does not support
-P(PCRE). All grep patterns in the script use-oE(extended regex) for portability. - Very long threads may truncate in the meta description. If output seems incomplete, compare against the PDF version.
- The script extracts from the first
<meta name="description">match — if the page structure adds multiple, it may grab the wrong one.
Troubleshooting
"Thread not found" error:
The thread is not yet indexed on twitter-thread.com. Visit https://twitter-thread.com/t/{tweet_id} in a browser to trigger indexing, wait ~30s, then retry.
Empty article text:
twitter-thread.com may have changed their HTML structure. Check if the <meta name="description"> tag still contains the article content.
X Article links (x.com/i/article/...):
These are NOT threads. They require a logged-in browser session and cannot be fetched with this skill.
Protected/deleted tweets: The skill cannot access tweets from private accounts or tweets that have been deleted.