name: x-twitter
description: Read and search X/Twitter using the bird CLI. Use when user asks about tweets, wants to check what someone posted, search X, or monitor AI news on Twitter.
user_invocable: false
github_url: https://github.com/steipete/bird
github_hash: d3dd4a0

X/Twitter Access

Read tweets, search, and monitor accounts using the bird CLI (steipete/bird).

Trigger

Use when:
- User asks "what did @X post?" or "check Karpathy's tweets"
- User wants to search X for a topic
- User asks for AI news from Twitter/X
- User wants to read a specific tweet or thread

Prerequisites

• bird CLI installed (/opt/homebrew/bin/bird)
• Authenticated via Chrome cookies (--cookie-source chrome)
• Logged in as @zkMingLi

Commands

All commands need --cookie-source chrome for auth.

Read a Tweet

bird read <tweet-url-or-id> --cookie-source chrome

Get User's Recent Tweets

bird user-tweets <handle> -n 10 --cookie-source chrome

Search Tweets

bird search "query" -n 20 --cookie-source chrome

Get Thread/Conversation

bird thread <tweet-url-or-id> --cookie-source chrome

Check Mentions

bird mentions -n 10 --cookie-source chrome

Get Bookmarks

bird bookmarks -n 20 --cookie-source chrome

AI/Trending News

bird news --ai-only -n 10 --cookie-source chrome

Home Timeline

bird home -n 20 --cookie-source chrome

Check Auth

bird whoami --cookie-source chrome

Common Handles for AI News

• @karpathy — Andrej Karpathy (AI research, LLMs)
• @emollick — Ethan Mollick (AI in business/education)
• @swyx — swyx (AI engineering, Smol AI)
• @simonw — Simon Willison (AI tools, LLMs)
• @xlr8harder — Jim Fan (NVIDIA, robotics)
• @DrJimFan — Jim Fan alt
• @hardmaru — David Ha (AI research)
• @ilovetypescript — Matt Pocock (AI + TypeScript)

Output Format

bird returns structured output with:
- Tweet text (full, untruncated)
- Author handle and display name
- Timestamp
- Media URLs (images/videos)
- Quote tweets (nested)
- Tweet URL

Cautions

• Read-only recommended: Posting can trigger bot detection
• Rate limits: Don't fetch too many tweets too quickly
• Cookie expiry: If auth fails, user needs to re-login to X in Chrome

Integration with AI News Skill

The /ai-news skill can use this for X account scanning in deep mode. Accounts are configured in /Users/terry/skills/ai-news/sources.yaml.

Example Workflows

Check what AI researchers are saying

bird user-tweets karpathy -n 5 --cookie-source chrome
bird user-tweets emollick -n 5 --cookie-source chrome

Search for topic

bird search "Claude Code tips" -n 10 --cookie-source chrome

Read a specific thread

bird thread https://x.com/karpathy/status/123456789 --cookie-source chrome