Twitter Lite

Twitter Lite is a personal research deck for Twitter and Mastodon. Create multiple named decks and arrange up to six columns per deck. Each column is bound to a connection account, so platforms and multiple accounts work side by side.

Scope

Multiple deck profiles with creation, selection, renaming, and deletion
Twitter search, user timeline, and list columns with independent relay accounts
Mastodon OAuth, multiple accounts, search, user, list, and hashtag columns
Native X search syntax, Top/Latest ranking, and optional filter:follows
List discovery for the profile selected in the column editor
Column editing, ordering, deletion/undo, manual refresh, and cursor pagination
SQLite-backed shared decks, revision conflicts, and device-local active selection
Temporary views for AI exploration, with explicit save and temporary copies
Server-only encrypted Mastodon credentials and Tailscale owner access
Read-only cards with original-post links, text, media, and quotes
Experimental WebMCP tools to manage decks and read or paginate their columns

Both / and /deck open the deck workspace. The separate reader, search, list, user-profile, and conversation routes have been removed. Original-post links open their source site; conversations are not rendered inside the app.

Built-in AI planning, summaries, and Bluesky/Threads/Nostr connectors are not implemented yet. An external browser agent can create and read decks through WebMCP.

Requirements and setup

Use Nix, or Node.js >=22.12.0 with pnpm 11.9.0. The committed .npmrc routes the @yuta scope to the public Gitea Packages registry.

nix develop -c pnpm install --frozen-lockfile
cp .env.example .env.local

The Nix development shell installs Hallmark's agent skill for the supported local agent targets. Set the runtime configuration in .env.local for Vite development, or export it before running the production server. In addition to the relay URL, configure the Serve origin, owner login, and an absolute SQLite path from .env.example. Mastodon needs an allowed instance and a runtime encryption key file; see storage, OAuth and restore.

export TWITTER_RELAY_BASE_URL=http://127.0.0.1:6900

The app discovers available account profiles through the relay's /profiles endpoint. Select a profile for each column. There is no global account selector, profile cookie, or application-level BIRD_PROFILE_NAME default. Requests validate that the bound profile still exists before fetching posts or lists. Bird and relay credentials stay on the server; saved deck definitions include stable connection IDs. The connection metadata resolves Twitter IDs to relay profiles; Mastodon credentials never go to the browser.

Commands

nix develop -c pnpm dev
nix develop -c pnpm dev:tailscale
nix develop -c pnpm generate:e2e-openapi
nix develop -c pnpm knip
nix develop -c pnpm test
nix develop -c pnpm test:e2e
nix develop -c pnpm test:live
nix develop -c pnpm build
nix develop -c pnpm start
nix develop -c pnpm db:generate

test:e2e uses the system Chromium supplied by the Nix dev shell. Playwright integration and Axe accessibility tests live under e2e/. A standalone mock HTTP relay exercises the production server-function boundary without contacting X or a personal relay. Orval generates API fixture types from a pinned twitter-openapi specification. Generated files are committed; run generate:e2e-openapi only when changing the pin or selected operations. Runtime requests use Bird.

test:live is an explicit, opt-in smoke test that performs one read-only Top search. For this standalone probe only, BIRD_PROFILE_NAME selects the account and TWITTER_LITE_LIVE_QUERY overrides the search text.

Deck workspace

The interface uses a full-height, dark TweetDeck-style workbench: a deck sidebar, compact column headers, and independently scrolling post columns. On narrow screens, the sidebar becomes a compact top bar. Add/edit forms open in native dialogs; Escape closes them and returns focus. Column menus contain editing, ordering, and deletion; refresh stays available directly in each header.

Create a deck for an investigation, then add columns for each perspective. Choose a connected account and one of its supported sources. Account changes affect only the edited column. Matching source conditions and accounts share the query cache; different profiles never share posts or cursors.

Saved decks live on the server and refresh across devices on focus and while visible. Conflicting revisions are rejected. Only the active deck is rendered and fetched; posts and cursors are not archived. The active selection stays local to the device.

AI-created decks start as temporary views in the current tab. Save a view to share it across devices, or make a temporary copy of a saved deck to experiment. Temporary views disappear on reload or navigation, including OAuth redirects. Existing version-2 browser decks have an explicit import action; invalid older data is left untouched. See the deck model and persistence contract.

WebMCP

A WebMCP-enabled browser exposes list_connections, list_decks, get_deck, set_deck, save_deck, select_deck, delete_deck, get_column_posts, and load_more_column on both deck routes. Discover connection IDs first. set_deck creates a temporary view when deckId is omitted. save_deck persists it. Replacing or deleting a saved deck requires its expectedRevision.

Enable chrome://flags/#enable-webmcp-testing, restart Chrome, and open the local app. Use the Model Context Tool Inspector to invoke tools. Registration uses native document.modelContext through usewebmcp; there is no polyfill or external MCP transport. Unsupported browsers retain the manual deck UI. See tool contracts and verification.

Development and dev:tailscale both bind to 127.0.0.1. Native WebMCP needs a secure context; use a Tailscale Serve HTTPS origin for remote access, and allow its exact hostname through __VITE_ADDITIONAL_SERVER_ALLOWED_HOSTS in the Vite process environment. HTTP and HTTPS origins have separate localStorage.

Set TWITTER_LITE_ORIGIN to the exact Serve HTTPS origin (no trailing slash) and TWITTER_LITE_ALLOWED_LOGIN to your Tailscale login. The app requires Serve's Tailscale-User-Login header and rejects other users. Keep the backend on localhost: the trusted Serve proxy supplies identity. Tagged clients do not provide user identity. Missing configuration fails closed; direct browser access to localhost does not supply the required identity. Playwright supplies an explicit fixture identity to its isolated test server.

NixOS service

The flake provides a production package and a NixOS module:

{
  inputs.twitter-lite.url =
    "git+https://git.yutakobayashi.com/yuta/twitter-lite";

  outputs = { nixpkgs, twitter-lite, ... }: {
    nixosConfigurations.example = nixpkgs.lib.nixosSystem {
      system = "x86_64-linux";
      modules = [
        twitter-lite.nixosModules.default
        {
          services.twitter-lite = {
            enable = true;
            relayBaseUrl = "http://127.0.0.1:6900";
            publicOrigin = "https://home.example-tailnet.ts.net";
            allowedLogin = "your-tailscale-login";
            mastodonOrigins = [ "https://fedi.yutakobayashi.com" ];
            credentialKeyFile = "/var/lib/secrets/twitter-lite-key";
          };
        }
      ];
    };
  };
}

The service listens on 127.0.0.1:3000. Set services.twitter-lite.port to change the port; the host remains loopback. The module reserves /var/lib/twitter-lite with mode 0700 for persistent state. credentialKeyFile can reference a runtime secret file for SNS credentials; systemd loads it as a credential, separate from the database and Nix store. Profiles are selected in column definitions, not service options. The package can also be built directly with nix build.

Reliability

Bird uses X's internal GraphQL operations through the configured relay. Query IDs and response shapes can change without notice.

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