bird 🐦

bird is a focused command-line tool for posting tweets, replying, and reading tweet details using Twitter/X's GraphQL API. It keeps setup minimal while supporting common workflows for automation or scripting.

Installation

cd ~/Projects/bird
pnpm install
pnpm run binary  # Creates the 'bird' executable

Usage

Commands at a glance

bird tweet "<text>" — post a new tweet.
bird reply <tweet-id-or-url> "<text>" — reply to a tweet using its ID or URL.
bird read <tweet-id-or-url> [--json] — fetch tweet content as text or JSON.
bird check — show which credentials are available and where they were sourced from.

Post a tweet

bird tweet "Hello from bird!"

Reply to a tweet

# Using tweet URL
bird reply "https://x.com/user/status/1234567890" "This is my reply"

# Using tweet ID directly
bird reply 1234567890 "This is my reply"

Read a tweet

# Get tweet content by URL or ID
bird read "https://x.com/user/status/1234567890"
bird read 1234567890 --json

Check credentials

bird check

Authentication

bird resolves credentials in the following order of priority:

CLI arguments (highest priority)

bird --auth-token "xxx" --ct0 "yyy" tweet "Hello"

Environment variables
```
export AUTH_TOKEN="xxx"
export CT0="yyy"
bird tweet "Hello"
```
Alternative env var names: TWITTER_AUTH_TOKEN, TWITTER_CT0
Chrome cookies (fallback - macOS only)
- Automatically extracts from Chrome's cookie database
- Requires Chrome to be logged into x.com
- May prompt for keychain access on first run

Getting Your Cookies

Open Chrome and log into x.com
Open DevTools (Cmd+Option+I)
Go to Application > Cookies > x.com
Copy the values for auth_token and ct0

Development

# Run in development mode
pnpm run dev tweet "Test"

# Run tests
pnpm test

# Run linter
pnpm run lint

# Fix lint issues
pnpm run lint:fix

Notes

Chrome cookie extraction requires macOS (uses sqlite3 and security CLI tools).
The keychain access may block when running over SSH; use environment variables instead.
Twitter/X may rotate GraphQL query IDs; update src/lib/twitter-client.ts if requests start failing.

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