Thread to Markdown for X

English

A Chrome extension (Manifest V3) that copies a thread on X (formerly Twitter) to the clipboard as Markdown, ready to paste into an LLM, Notion or Obsidian.

It does not use the X API. It reads the DOM of the page you are viewing in your logged-in browser
It makes no network requests. The extracted content is handled in memory only and is never stored or sent (only your settings are stored)
Permissions: storage, clipboardWrite, and access to x.com / twitter.com only

Installation

From a release zip

Extract thread-to-markdown-for-x-<version>.zip into any folder
Open chrome://extensions in Chrome and turn on “Developer mode” (top right)
Click “Load unpacked” and choose the extracted folder (the one containing manifest.json)
Reload any x.com tabs that are already open (the extension does not run on pages opened before it was loaded)

Build from source

Requires Node.js 22.2 or later (packaging uses crc32 from node:zlib).

npm install
npm run build      # builds the extension into dist/ (load this folder in step 3 above)
npm run package    # builds and creates thread-to-markdown-for-x-<version>.zip

Usage

On a post page (https://x.com/<user>/status/<id>), use any of the following.

Method	How
In-page button	The “Copy as Markdown” button below the actions (reply, like, …) of the main post
Popup	Extension icon in the toolbar → “Copy thread as Markdown”
Shortcut	`Alt+Shift+M` (can be changed at `chrome://extensions/shortcuts`)

When the copy finishes, the result (e.g. ✅ 5 posts copied as Markdown) appears at the bottom right. If copying fails, the Markdown is shown in a text area so you can copy it by hand.

Settings

Open “Options” in the popup, or “Details” → “Extension options” in chrome://extensions. Changes are saved immediately and apply from the next copy.

Setting	Choices (default in bold)	Description
Posts to copy	Thread by the author only / All posts from the main post on	“All posts” includes replies by others and adds `— @handle` to every heading (also switchable in the popup)
Auto-scroll	Off / On	Scrolls down automatically to collect posts beyond the screen (also switchable in the popup)
Image size	Large / Original	The `name=` parameter of image URLs
Date and URL of each post	HTML comment / Normal line	HTML comments are hidden in Obsidian and Notion previews
Obsidian	No frontmatter / Add YAML frontmatter	Adds YAML frontmatter (title, author, source, date, posts, tags) at the top

Example output

# X Thread by @username (2026-10-14)

- Author: Display Name (@username)
- Source: https://x.com/username/status/1234567890
- Posts: 2
- Extracted: 2026-10-14 21:30 (+09:00)

---

### Tweet 1 (Main)
<!-- 2026-10-14 09:12 +09:00 · https://x.com/username/status/1234567890 -->

Post text…

- Attached Media:
  - [image] https://pbs.twimg.com/media/XXXX?format=jpg&name=large
  - [video] (poster) https://pbs.twimg.com/amplify_video_thumb/...

> **Quoted post by @other** (2026-10-13)
> Quoted text…
> Source: https://x.com/other/status/987

### Tweet 2
<!-- 2026-10-14 09:15 +09:00 · https://x.com/username/status/1234567891 -->

Reply text…

Post text is output almost as is. Only line-leading characters that would break the Markdown structure (# that would become a heading, >, ---, …) are escaped.

Known limitations

Only posts rendered on the page are copied. X removes off-screen posts from the DOM, so a long thread may be cut off. Turn on auto-scroll to collect posts further down
Auto-scroll stops at 100 posts or 30 seconds (you can also press “Stop”). When it stops early, the toast and the end of the Markdown warn that the thread may continue. Posts above the main post are limited to those shown when the page was opened. Buttons such as “Show more replies” are not pressed
Posts below “Discover more” (recommendations) are excluded, even by the same author
Long posts truncated with “Show more” are expanded by pressing X’s own “Show more” before extraction. A post that does not expand within 3 seconds is output truncated, with a warning
For videos and GIFs, only the poster image URL is recorded (the video file URL is not)
Image ALT text is not output. X fills images without ALT text with a default in the UI language (e.g. “Image”), which cannot be told apart from real ALT text
The URL of a quoted post is available only when its card contains an image (otherwise the Source: line is omitted)
The extension does not run in tabs opened before it was installed or updated. Reload the page (in that case the shortcut does nothing)
Extraction may break when X changes its page structure (DOM). See “Fixing selectors” below

Fixing selectors (when X changes its DOM)

All dependencies on X’s DOM are collected in src/content/extract/selectors.ts. They do not rely on obfuscated class names (css-xxxxx, r-xxxxx), aria-label, or displayed text (which changes with the UI language).

Open a page where extraction fails and run the following in the DevTools console (it copies the page’s main element, with its URL, to the clipboard)
```
copy('\n' + document.querySelector('main').outerHTML)
```
Save it as tests/fixtures/raw/<case>.html (this folder is excluded from Git because it contains real user names and posts)
Create the anonymized fixture. The script fails if anonymization leaves any original value behind
```
node scripts/anonymize.mjs tests/fixtures/raw/<case>.html tests/fixtures/<case>.html
```
Run npm test to see which extraction broke. To add the fixture to the tests, import it like the existing ones: import html from './fixtures/<case>.html?raw'
Fix the selectors in selectors.ts (comment the purpose of any new selector)
Check that the snapshot diffs are as intended, then update them with npx vitest run -u
Rebuild with npm run build and check in the browser

Development

Command	Description
`npm run build`	Rebuild `dist/`
`npm run package`	Build and create the release zip
`npm test`	Tests (Vitest + jsdom)
`npm run typecheck`	Type check
`npm run lint`	ESLint
`npm run format`	Prettier
`npm run check:no-network`	Check that `src/` contains no `fetch(` / `XMLHttpRequest`

The design is in PLAN.md, the development workflow in CLAUDE.md, and the work tickets in docs/ (all in Japanese).

License

MIT

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