birdapi 0.0.3

CLI and library for X/Twitter GraphQL API (cookie auth, no API key required)

bird 🐦

A Python CLI and library for X/Twitter's GraphQL API using cookie-based authentication — no API key required.

Disclaimer: This uses X/Twitter's undocumented internal GraphQL API. X can change endpoints or rotate query IDs at any time. Expect occasional breakage.

Installation

pip install -e .

Requires Python 3.10+.

Quick start

1. Configure credentials

python -m bird.cli configure

You'll be prompted for two cookies from your active X/Twitter session:

1. Open x.com and log in
2. Open DevTools → Application → Cookies → https://x.com
3. Copy the values of auth_token and ct0

Credentials are saved to ~/.config/bird/credentials.json and used automatically by all commands.

2. Run commands

python -m bird.cli whoami
python -m bird.cli search "from:username" -n 10
python -m bird.cli tweet "Hello from Python"

Commands

Command	Description
configure	Save credentials interactively
whoami	Show the authenticated account
check	Show where credentials are loaded from
tweet "<text>"	Post a new tweet
reply <id-or-url> "<text>"	Reply to a tweet
read <id-or-url>	Fetch a tweet
thread <id-or-url>	Show the full conversation thread
replies <id-or-url>	List replies to a tweet
search "<query>"	Search for tweets
mentions	Find tweets mentioning you
user-tweets @handle	Get tweets from a user's timeline
home	Your "For You" timeline
home --following	Your "Following" timeline
bookmarks	List your bookmarks
unbookmark <id-or-url>	Remove a bookmark
likes	List your liked tweets
following	Users you follow
followers	Users that follow you
lists	Your owned lists
list-timeline <id-or-url>	Tweets from a list
news	News and trending topics from Explore
about @handle	"About this account" info
query-ids	Inspect or refresh GraphQL query ID cache

Common options

--json              Output raw JSON
-n / --count N      Number of results (default varies per command)
--cursor STRING     Resume pagination from a cursor
--max-pages N       Limit number of pages fetched
--timeout MS        Request timeout in milliseconds

Auth options (override saved credentials)

--auth-token TOKEN
--ct0 TOKEN

# Or via environment variables
AUTH_TOKEN=... CT0=... python -m bird.cli whoami

Examples

# Search and output JSON
python -m bird.cli search "python asyncio" -n 20 --json

# Get someone's recent tweets
python -m bird.cli user-tweets @gvanrossum -n 50

# Fetch a full thread
python -m bird.cli thread https://x.com/user/status/1234567890123456789

# List bookmarks from a specific folder
python -m bird.cli bookmarks --folder-id 1234567890123456789 -n 50

# Fetch AI-curated news
python -m bird.cli news --ai-only -n 10

# Paginate following list
python -m bird.cli following -n 200 --json

Library usage

from bird import TwitterClient

client = TwitterClient(auth_token="...", ct0="...")

# Search
tweets, next_cursor = client.search("from:gvanrossum", count=20)
for tweet in tweets:
    print(f"@{tweet.author.username}: {tweet.text}")

# Post
tweet_id = client.tweet("Hello from Python!")

# Reply
client.reply("Thanks!", reply_to_tweet_id=tweet_id)

# Bookmarks
tweets, cursor = client.get_bookmarks(count=50)

# Engagement
client.like(tweet_id)
client.retweet(tweet_id)
client.bookmark(tweet_id)

# News
items = client.get_news(count=10, ai_only=True)

Context manager

with TwitterClient(auth_token="...", ct0="...") as client:
    user = client.get_current_user()
    print(user.username)

Project structure

src/bird/
  client.py        TwitterClient — all API methods
  cli.py           Click CLI entry point
  _config.py       Credential storage (~/.config/bird/credentials.json)
  _constants.py    API URLs, bearer token, fallback query IDs
  _features.py     GraphQL feature-flag payloads
  _models.py       Dataclasses: Tweet, User, TwitterList, NewsItem, …
  _utils.py        Response parsing utilities
  _query_ids.py    Runtime query ID cache (scraped from x.com bundles)
tests/
  test_utils.py    Unit tests (no network required)

Development

pip install -e ".[dev]"
pytest tests/
ruff check src/ tests/

Credential resolution order

1. --auth-token / --ct0 CLI flags
2. AUTH_TOKEN / CT0 environment variables
3. ~/.config/bird/credentials.json (written by bird configure)