trac3r00 Social Research
Read-only social content discovery through the platforms' own public endpoints — no headless browser, no login, no scraping around walls.
Platform capabilities (honest matrix)
| Platform | No-auth access | How |
|---|---|---|
| X/Twitter | Profiles, recent posts | Public syndication API (syndication.twitter.com) — rate-limited (429 when hot; retry with backoff) |
| Threads | Public profiles/posts only | threads.net/@user public web pages; no public search API — search is not possible without auth, documented as such |
| Full search, posts, comments | Official .json endpoints (reddit.com/r/X/search.json) |
|
| Hacker News | Full search, items | Firebase API (hacker-news.firebaseio.com) + Algolia search (hn.algolia.com) |
| Bluesky | Profiles, posts, search | Public AT Protocol API (public.api.bsky.app) |
X/Twitter via syndication
# User timeline (no auth):
curl -s "https://syndication.twitter.com/srv/timeline-profile/screen-name/USERNAME?dnt=true"
# Returns HTML with embedded tweets; parse text from it.
# 429 = rate limited: back off, don't hammer.
Reddit search
curl -s "https://www.reddit.com/search.json?q=QUERY&limit=10" -H "User-Agent: research"
curl -s "https://www.reddit.com/r/SUBREDDIT/hot.json?limit=10" -H "User-Agent: research"
Hacker News search
curl -s "https://hn.algolia.com/api/v1/search?query=QUERY&tags=story"
curl -s "https://hacker-news.firebaseio.com/v0/topstories.json"
Bluesky
curl -s "https://public.api.bsky.app/xrpc/app.bsky.actor.searchActors?q=QUERY"
curl -s "https://public.api.bsky.app/xrpc/app.bsky.feed.searchPosts?q=QUERY"
Threads — the honest limitation
Threads has no public search API and no syndication endpoint. Public profile
pages (threads.net/@username) render post content in HTML for logged-out
viewers in some regions, but availability varies. Searching Threads content
without a Meta account is not possible — this skill documents the limitation
rather than pretending a workaround exists. For Threads-specific needs, the
user's logged-in browser session (via a browser automation skill) is the
only legitimate path.
Pairs with
ultimate-browsing (escalate to Tier 2 stealth browser when public
endpoints are insufficient and you have legitimate access).