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#

bash

scripts/x_thread.sh text "https://x.com/user/status/1234567890"

Download PDF#

bash

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.