Sources · Personal source · export guide
Export your X / Twitter archive into a private AI brain
For many people the X archive is the largest body of their own writing they own. The brain reads your tweets as a voice layer, your follows as people, your lists as interests — and never opens a DM.
What a X / Twitter export holds — and what the brain makes of it
The archive arrives as a folder of JavaScript-wrapped JSON. The brain builder reads your tweets and long-form note-tweets (retweets are excluded — they are someone else’s voice), your following and followers as handles, your lists, and like counts. Tweets become the voice layer: what you argued, announced and joked about, by date. Follows become people notes that merge, by name, with the same people in your LinkedIn or GitHub exports.
Two files are quarantined on purpose: direct messages and the address book you may once have let X import. Neither is read.
Get the export
How to export your X / Twitter data
The exact clicks, as they are today. Platforms move menus; the engine’s source docs are updated when they do.
- 01
x.com → Settings → Your account → Download an archive of your data
- 02
Re-verify your identity when asked
- 03
Wait 24–48 h for the email, then download the ZIP
- 04
Drop the archive on X / Twitter 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 X / Twitter
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.
- What was I writing about in 2021, and did I change my mind since?
- Which people I follow on X are also in my LinkedIn network?
- Which of my tweets drew the most likes, by topic?
- Which lists am I keeping, and what do they say about my interests?
limitX takes 24–48 hours to prepare the archive and may ask you to re-verify your identity first; handles are matched by name, so a person whose display name differs across platforms stays two notes.
Good to know
The honest answers.
Are my DMs in the brain? No. DMs and the imported address book are quarantined — never read, never imported.
Why are retweets missing? A retweet is someone else’s words. The voice layer keeps only what you wrote: tweets and note-tweets.
Start
Your X / Twitter 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
Just looking? Open Studio in your browser — two demo brains, nothing to install