Sources · Personal source · export guide
Export your TikTok data into a private AI brain
TikTok’s algorithm is famous for knowing you quickly. Its data download lets you see the inputs: what you searched, which hashtags you favourited, who you follow — and the brain reads them as interests.
What a TikTok export holds — and what the brain makes of it
Request the JSON format (the machine-readable one). The brain builder reads who you follow as people, your searches and favourite hashtags as interests, your comments as a voice layer, and like and favourite counts. Direct-message text sits in the same file, but no mapping rule ever selects it — the brain is built from the files it is told to read, and that rule is in the open-source code.
TikTok is strongest as a complement: beside YouTube and Spotify it rounds out the interest graph; beside Instagram it fills in the people graph of a younger network.
Get the export
How to export your TikTok data
The exact clicks, as they are today. Platforms move menus; the engine’s source docs are updated when they do.
- 01
App → Profile → ☰ → Settings → Account → Download your data
- 02
Choose Format: JSON (machine-readable)
- 03
Ready in days — download within 4 days
- 04
Drop the archive on TikTok in Studio’s Sources — or tell Claude Code or Codex “build my brain from this”. The source is detected by itself, even inside a combined archive.
Then, next month
An export is a snapshot. Drop a newer one and press Update: your edits and _notes/ are kept, and the update report says what changed.
Then ask it
What you can ask a brain built from TikTok
Examples, not promises: the answer is whatever your notes hold, and every answer cites the notes it came from. The more exports you add, the more these questions cross sources.
- Which hashtags have I favourited, and which topics do they cluster into?
- What was I searching for on TikTok last winter?
- Who do I follow on TikTok and nowhere else?
limitThe download is ready in days and must be downloaded within four; the brain knows only what the file holds at that moment.
Good to know
The honest answers.
Are my DMs read? No. DM text is in the export file, but no rule selects it — the brain never reads it.
JSON or TXT? JSON. Choose the machine-readable format when you request the download.
Start
Your TikTok export already exists. Turn it into a brain.
Free and open source. Start with John’s demo brain while your export arrives.
Second Brain Studio · Mac (Apple silicon and Intel), Windows and Linux · free · MIT
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