Social Media Tracker (sm-tracker)

sm-tracker is a CLI that tracks follower and following counts across 🐦 Twitter/X, 🦋 Bluesky, 🛰️ Farcaster, 🐘 Mastodon, 🧵 Threads, 📘 Facebook, 📸 Instagram, and 📺 YouTube.

sm-tracker stores social-metric snapshots in libSQL (local SQLite-compatible by default), prints human-readable output by default, and supports JSON/CSV for scripts, cron jobs, and AI-agent automation.

✅ Requirements

• Python 3.12+
• uv
• API credentials in .env
• Runtime settings in config.toml

⚙️ Installation

Install from PyPI

uv tool install sm-tracker
sm-tracker help

To upgrade later:

uv tool upgrade sm-tracker

Local development

uv sync
uv run sm-tracker help

🚀 Quickstart

After installing sm-tracker, run:

1. Create credentials and app config via guided setup:

sm-tracker config

1. Track a snapshot:

sm-tracker track -p twitter -p bluesky

1. Show latest values with deltas:

sm-tracker show -p twitter -p bluesky

1. Inspect historical data:

sm-tracker history -p twitter --limit 10

🧭 Onboarding Guide

Use this flow for a clean checkout to first successful snapshot.

📦 1) Install dependencies

uv tool install sm-tracker

🛠️ 2) Run guided setup

sm-tracker config

The command will create or update:

• .env for API credentials and account identifiers
• config.toml for database path, log path, retention, and log level

🔑 3) Platform credential checklist

You can configure one or many platforms. Missing credentials skip only that platform.

Twitter/X

Note: The Twitter/X API requires a paid Basic tier subscription or higher. The Free tier is not sufficient.

• TWITTER_CONSUMER_KEY
• TWITTER_CONSUMER_SECRET
• TWITTER_ACCESS_TOKEN
• TWITTER_ACCESS_TOKEN_SECRET
• TWITTER_HANDLE

Bluesky

• BLUESKY_HANDLE
• Optional: BLUESKY_APP_PASSWORD

Farcaster

• FARCASTER_API_KEY
• FARCASTER_USERNAME

Get API credentials from https://warpcast.com/developer.

Mastodon

• MASTODON_ACCESS_TOKEN
• MASTODON_INSTANCE (for example mastodon.social)

Threads

• THREADS_ACCESS_TOKEN
• THREADS_USER_ID
• Optional for OAuth flow: THREADS_APP_ID, THREADS_APP_SECRET, THREADS_REDIRECT_URI

Refresh Threads credentials via OAuth when needed:

sm-tracker auth -p threads

Meta (Facebook & Instagram)

See the full Credentials Setup Guide for step-by-step instructions.

To configure either platform easily, use the interactive auth flow to exchange short-lived tokens for long-lived ones automatically:

sm-tracker auth -p facebook
# OR
sm-tracker auth -p instagram

Facebook:

• FACEBOOK_PAGE_ACCESS_TOKEN (Generated by auth command)
• Optional: FACEBOOK_ACCESS_TOKEN + FACEBOOK_ID

Instagram:

• LONG_LIVED_USER_TOKEN (Generated by auth command)
• INSTAGRAM_ACCOUNT_ID

YouTube

• YOUTUBE_API_KEY
• YOUTUBE_HANDLE or YOUTUBE_CHANNEL_ID

📁 4) File locations

• Database path: from config.toml ([paths.<profile>].db)
• Logs directory: from config.toml ([paths.<profile>].logs)
• Log file name: sm-tracker.log

🧪 5) Common troubleshooting

• No platforms detected in track:
  • Run sm-tracker config and ensure required platform env vars are present.
• show says no snapshots yet:
  • Run sm-tracker track first.
• Token expiration warnings (Threads/Meta):
  • Run sm-tracker auth -p threads, -p facebook, or -p instagram to refresh and securely save new tokens to .env.
• Live tests failing during development:
  • If running mise run test-real locally, ensure credentials in your .env are completely uncommented. Variables defined in your terminal session can occasionally override .env values during tests.

🧰 Commands

• track: fetch counts from configured platforms and save a snapshot (--json / --csv for structured output)
• show: print latest snapshot with deltas from previous snapshot (--json / --csv supported)
• history: print history table (Date | Platform | Followers | Following | Delta) or structured output with --json / --csv
• config: guided setup and validation for .env and config.toml
• auth: run OAuth/Token exchange flows for supported platforms (threads, facebook, instagram)
• help: print CLI usage

🧱 Tech Stack

Core

Layer	Technology	Notes
CLI	Typer	Elegant command-line interfaces
Storage	libSQL	SQLite-compatible, tursodatabase/libsql

Platforms

Platform	Technology	Notes
Twitter	Tweepy	tweepy/tweepy
Bluesky	atproto	bluesky-social/atproto
Farcaster	Direct API	Warpcast API (api.warpcast.com)
Mastodon	Mastodon.py	halcy/Mastodon.py
Threads	meta-threads-sdk	MetaThreads/meta-threads-sdk
Meta	Direct API	Graph API for Facebook and Instagram tokens
YouTube	Direct API	YouTube Data API v3

Python: 3.12+ (required by meta-threads-sdk)

📝 Configuration

Configuration is split into two files per best practice:

File	Purpose	Location
.env	API keys, tokens, secrets, account identifiers	Project dir or loaded from process env
config.toml	Paths, retention, log level, non-sensitive	~/.config/sm-tracker/config.toml or project dir

.env is never committed; config.toml may ship with defaults.

Quick Links

• Credential template: .env.example
• App config template: config.toml.example
• Full credential setup guide: docs/CREDENTIAL_SETUP_GUIDE.md
• Full config and env variable reference: docs/CONFIG_REFERENCE.md

📊 Example output

twitter
  Followers: 132 (+10)
  Following: 178 (0)

Date | Platform | Followers | Following | Delta
2026-02-25T10:30:00Z | twitter | 122 | 178 | N/A
2026-02-26T10:30:00Z | twitter | 132 | 178 | +10

💡 Notes

• Default output is plain text. Use --json or --csv on track, show, and history for structured output.
• Missing credentials for one platform do not stop other platforms from running.
• show and history print empty-state guidance if there is no stored data yet.

📄 License

MIT

🚢 Release Process

For local release verification:

mise run release-build
mise run release-check

Manual release

1. Bump version in pyproject.toml.
2. Add the release note to CHANGELOG.md.
3. Run:

mise run release-build
mise run release-check

1. Commit and push the release changes.

GitHub release

1. Trigger the Release workflow manually with target testpypi to verify the package.
2. Push a tag like v0.1.2 to publish to PyPI:

git tag v0.1.2
git push origin v0.1.2

Trusted Publishing references:

• PyPI docs: https://docs.pypi.org/trusted-publishers/using-a-publisher/
• GitHub docs: https://docs.github.com/en/actions/how-tos/secure-your-work/security-harden-deployments/oidc-in-pypi