How can Claude or another AI agent read a tweet from an x.com link?

You are in Claude Code, you paste three links from a launch thread and ask what people are saying and who these accounts are. The web fetch tool comes back with a login wall, a JavaScript shell or a refusal, because x.com shows almost nothing to visitors without a session. People work around it with shell scripts that route through third-party mirrors, and those break whenever the mirror does. A sturdier fix is a tool that takes the link and returns the post as data.

The two calls

• X post detail takes url (x.com or twitter.com status links) or id and returns the text, media, views, likes, reposts, replies count, language, time and the author.
• X account profile takes the handle and returns followers, following, post count, bio and verification, which is usually what "who is this" means.

With the MCP server connected, add one line to your project's CLAUDE.md so the agent stops trying the browser first:

For x.com or twitter.com links, do not use WebFetch. Use the okdata call tool with endpoint x.posts.get and params {"url": "<link>"}; for the author, x.users.get with {"username": "<handle>"}.

Outside an MCP client, it is one HTTP call per link:

import os
import requests

API = "https://api.okdata.online"
H = {"Authorization": f"Bearer {os.environ['OKDATA_API_KEY']}"}

def read_post(link):
    body = requests.get(API + "/v1/x/posts/get", headers=H, params={"url": link}, timeout=60).json()
    if body["code"] != "ok":
        return {"link": link, "error": body["code"], "message": body["message"]}
    post = body["data"]["item"]
    return {"text": post["text"], "author": post["author"]["username"],
            "likes": post["metrics"]["likes"], "views": post["metrics"]["views"],
            "published_at": post["published_at"]}

print(read_post("https://x.com/user/status/1850000000000000000"))

What it costs

Task	Calls	Cost
One post	1	$0.001
One post and its author	2	{{cost:x.posts.get1+x.users.get1}}
3 posts and 3 authors	6	{{cost:x.posts.get3+x.users.get3}}
1,000 links from a spreadsheet	1,000	$1.00

Gotchas

• A thread is several posts and each link is one of them. Fetch each link, or search from:handle with X post search to get the author's recent posts in one page.
• You get the reply count, not the replies.
• Deleted posts and posts from protected accounts return not_found and are not charged.
• Views can be null on older posts; the response lists null fields and why in meta.unavailable.
• Public posts only.

Other routes

The official X API is the right choice when you also need to post or reply, or when your company requires terms-backed access; it needs a developer account and is billed by X. Mirror-based scripts are free and fine for a personal setup, as long as you accept that they can stop working without notice. For one post, copying the text into the chat still works.