# Build brief — a focused alternative to GetXAPI

> **Verdict:** Partly, if you narrow it · **Buildability:** 58/100 · **Category:** Dev Tools
> **Source:** https://www.canitbevibecoded.com/getxapi
> Independent editorial assessment from Can It Be Vibe Coded? Not affiliated with, endorsed by, or derived from GetXAPI. Verify current pricing and capabilities before acting.

## Context

**GetXAPI** — Twitter/X data API · tweets, profiles, followers, posting, DMs and real-time webhook monitoring at $0.001/call. It currently costs $15/mo.

For personal, read-only scale this is genuinely kinda: twscrape plus a throwaway account gets you tweets from a few handles in a contained effort. The gaps are the product: X actively fights automated access, so the DIY version breaks whenever X changes something, burns the accounts it runs on, cannot safely post or DM, has no real-time push, and does not scale. You pay for requests that keep working next week.

This brief describes a focused, single-operator replacement for the part of GetXAPI that is genuinely reproducible. It is deliberately narrower than the product it replaces, and it says so in writing. Build the useful core; do not pretend to have rebuilt the rest.

## What you are building

A Python CLI that pulls tweets and profiles for a shortlist of handles into SQLite on a cron, using an X account you are willing to lose.

- Build the focused developer workflow you use repeatedly, with local configuration.
- A responsive interface with real empty, loading, success, and error states.

## Requirements

### Functional

- A throwaway X account.
- Patience for re-login breakage.

### Non-functional

- Accessibility: semantic markup, labelled controls, visible focus, and reduced-motion support.
- Security: server-side secrets, validated input, and no credentials in the client bundle.
- Reliability: retries with backoff on external calls, and a clear failure state when a provider is down.
- Portability: the operator can export their data and leave without losing it.

## Implementation brief

Build me a personal Twitter/X archive tool in Python.

- Use twscrape (pip) for all X access; I will add one or two throwaway
  accounts with `twscrape add_accounts` myself. Never use my real account.
- watchlist.txt holds up to 10 handles, one per line.
- An hourly cron entry point `python fetch.py`: for each handle, pull new
  tweets since the last stored id and upsert into SQLite (tweets: id, handle,
  text, created_at, like_count, retweet_count, is_reply, is_quote).
- Be gentle: shuffle handle order, sleep 5-15s between handles, and back off
  for an hour on repeated failures instead of hammering.
- `python export.py <handle>` writes that handle's archive to JSON and CSV.
- A localhost dashboard (Flask, one page): newest tweets across all handles,
  a per-handle sparkline of tweets per day, and a search box over a SQLite
  full-text index.
- Local only: no cloud, no accounts beyond the burners, no telemetry;
  session data stays in twscrape's own store.
- README: setup, the cron line, and a blunt warning that scraping X breaks
  routinely and burner accounts get flagged; when fetch.py starts failing,
  re-login or swap accounts.
- Explicitly out of scope: posting, DMs, webhooks/streaming, more than ~10
  handles, and anything commercial.

## Delivery standard

- Inspect the repository first, then write a short implementation plan before writing code.
- Deliver the smallest complete end-to-end workflow first; every primary control must work against persisted data.
- Use real validation and storage; never substitute fake dashboards, decorative controls, hard-coded success states, or mock integrations.
- Include responsive layouts plus genuine empty, loading, success, validation, and failure states.
- Keep secrets server-side in environment variables, provide .env.example, and never commit credentials or user data.
- Add structured logs around every external call and return actionable errors without leaking sensitive details.
- Write unit tests for the core logic and one automated test of the main user journey.
- Finish with a README covering setup, architecture, data location, backups, tests, deployment, and known limitations.

## Acceptance criteria

- [ ] A clean install starts the app using only the README and .env.example.
- [ ] The primary journey works from first visit through saved result, reload, edit, export, and deletion where applicable.
- [ ] Invalid input, missing configuration, provider failure, and an empty database each have a usable state.
- [ ] The interface works at 390px and 1440px, is keyboard navigable, and shows visible focus on every control.
- [ ] Tests, type checking, linting, and a production build all pass with no ignored failures.
- [ ] No part of the interface implies a live integration, security guarantee, or scale capability that was not actually built and verified.

## Non-goals

Do not build these, and do not claim to have replaced them:

- Reliability: every X change is your outage until you patch it.
- Account safety: automation flags and burns the login it runs on.
- Write actions: posting and DMs from a scraper risk real bans.
- Real-time push: no webhooks, you poll and you lag.
- Reliability at the vendor's scale is an operations problem, not a prompt.
- The last 20 percent is sync, migration fidelity, speed, and edge cases.

## What you still own after launch

- Run migrations, backups, restores, and dependency updates.
- Test the critical journey after every model, API, or hosting change.
- Monitor failures and fix the edge cases a first prompt will miss.

## Risk

**Operational risk.** The code is achievable; dependable data, integrations, and ongoing operations are the real cost.

Editorial confidence in this assessment: high. No independent one-shot implementation is linked yet.

## Prior art

Working open-source software you can read, fork, or borrow from before starting:

- [twscrape](https://github.com/vladkens/twscrape) — account-based X scraper, the standard DIY starting point
- [twitter-scraper](https://github.com/the-convocation/twitter-scraper) — TypeScript X scraper, no official API

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