teapawt

A privacy-focused Twitter/X frontend written in Rust.

Public instance: nitter.cf (also xitter.cf).

Features

• Privacy-focused: No third-party JavaScript, tracking, ads, or remote fonts
• RSS feeds: Subscribe to any user's tweets
• SOCKS5 exits for GraphQL: Pin each cookie session to one proxy port so its apparent IP stays stable
• In-process cache: First-page search, profiles, and stale-while-revalidate so repeats do not wait on X
• FxEmbed-style Discord embeds:
  • Multiple images displayed in carousel on mobile
  • Videos play directly in the embed
  • Proper image dimensions for better layout
  • ActivityPub JSON endpoint for rich embeds

Requirements

• Rust 1.96.1+
• Twitter/X session tokens for API access
• Optional: SOCKS5 endpoints if X blocks the server's own IP

Building

cargo build --release

The crate and binary stay named teapot so existing configs and process managers keep working.

Configuration

1. Copy the example config:

cp config/teapot.example.toml config/teapot.toml

2. Edit config/teapot.toml. Set title = "teapawt" (or whatever you want shown in the navbar).

3. Behind nginx or another TLS terminator, set https = true and publicPort = 443 so prefs bookmarks, RSS, and og:image links omit the listen port (8471 or whatever port is).

4. Create a sessions file with your Twitter/X credentials:

cp sessions.example.jsonl sessions.jsonl
# Edit sessions.jsonl with your auth_token and ct0 from browser cookies

Cookie sessions use auth_token and ct0. OAuth sessions use oauth_token and oauth_secret. See sessions.example.jsonl for the JSONL shape.

Never commit a real sessions.jsonl, config/teapot.toml, proxies.txt, or session-proxies.json. Those paths are gitignored.

Proxies

X GraphQL (search, profiles, tweets) can go out through SOCKS5. Media (/pic, /video, /gif) stays on the optional HTTP proxy and does not use the SOCKS list.

cp proxies.example.txt proxies.txt
# one host:port:user:pass per line

# config/teapot.toml
socksProxiesFile   = "proxies.txt"
sessionProxiesFile = "session-proxies.json"

All lines must share one hostname (different ports are the rotating exits). On startup teapawt DNS-probes that host, keeps the lowest-ping A record, and pins each session id to one port. Pins are rewritten to sessionProxiesFile as { "sessionId": port } only — credentials stay in proxies.txt.

apiProxy is an HTTP/HTTPS proxy for GraphQL when you are not using SOCKS. It is ignored when socksProxiesFile is set.

Tunnels to x.com are HTTP/1.1 over TLS with keep-alive, TCP_NODELAY, and rustls session resumption. Idle tunnels are reused for a short window so a second search does not pay a new SOCKS + TLS handshake.

Rate limits and cache

• maxConcurrentReqs is per cookie session, not global. A busy public instance should set it to 1000000. At that size the cap never queues a call, which matters once the instance is popular enough that every account would otherwise sit at a small limit.
• clientBudget caps how fast one visitor IP can spend uncached X calls. Cache hits, media, and static files are free. SearchTimeline costs 2 tokens.
• First-page search is cached for 60 seconds, then served stale for 4 more minutes while a refresh runs.
• Profiles are cached for 5 minutes, then served stale for 20 more minutes.
• Search result pages seed user ids and prefetch a few profiles so a click often hits cache.

Empty HTTP 404s from SearchTimeline are treated as a brief X/WAF blip (TransientUpstream) and retried on another session. Dead cookies are 401, or 403 with code 326 — not those empty 404s.

Some queries fail with X error 214 (Query is denylisted in Search Content Control tool). That is X's platform denylist, not a teapawt setting.

Running

# Development
cargo run

# Production
./target/release/teapot

The server listens on http://localhost:8080 by default (address / port in the config).

Getting Twitter Sessions

To use the Twitter API, you need session tokens from a logged-in Twitter account:

1. Log into Twitter/X in your browser
2. Open Developer Tools (F12) → Application → Cookies
3. Copy the values of auth_token and ct0
4. Add them to sessions.jsonl

Project Structure

teapawt/
├── src/
│   ├── main.rs          # Entry point
│   ├── config.rs        # Configuration
│   ├── error.rs         # Error types
│   ├── types/           # Data structures (User, Tweet, Timeline, etc.)
│   ├── api/             # Twitter API client, SOCKS5 pool, OAuth, parsing
│   ├── cache/           # In-process cache (TTL + stale-while-revalidate)
│   ├── routes/          # HTTP route handlers
│   ├── views/           # Maud HTML templates
│   └── utils/           # Utilities (HMAC, formatters)
├── public/              # Static assets (CSS, JS, fonts, logo)
├── config/              # teapot.example.toml only
├── proxies.example.txt  # Dummy SOCKS5 list
├── sessions.example.jsonl
└── Cargo.toml

Embed Improvements

This rewrite includes FxEmbed-style improvements for Discord embeds:

Multiple Images

Discord can display all images from a tweet in a carousel. This works via an ActivityPub JSON endpoint at /users/{username}/statuses/{id} that returns media attachments.

Video Playback

Videos can be played directly in Discord embeds using twitter:player meta tags:

• twitter:player - Embed URL
• twitter:player:stream - Direct MP4 URL
• twitter:player:width/height - Dimensions

Image Dimensions

All images include og:image:width and og:image:height meta tags for proper layout.

Donate

Running the public instance costs money for servers, bandwidth and the accounts and exits that keep it working. If nitter.cf is useful to you, donations help keep it online. Nothing is required.

Coin	Address
BTC	bc1qtm4rep7kyp2p28hlkfktpnd0j7uew47vnt2mev
LTC	ltc1q9xlaysse0mpfwf025esd69kt9zu3md22gh23du
ETH	0x6abA18D203520c8F90ca63eE7426a7bC345D98e6
SOL	E5ekoiauCR8yiNp451dmuPzhUxo84P5x3m9WJBK5kxZe
XRP	r3jYXNdMk2Vz5hXhKCKE9re8uz93JQFG1r
DOGE	DSBq5jRWkiwmEh1G7zBwmQDgRkvRr61fmb
XMR	85CTwq5wGjWZw5GgzgwZPrHyZxpLXMK5oZSSSk5j4x9w1bpqzisaWAUZYaAPfh6rP2MZJcaFqF1XmEzkw6YCqJSS2Txu6Z8

License

GNU Affero General Public License v3.0