v0.6.0 — AI & Security Focus

What's new

• AI/Security niche: 40 curated feeds (OpenAI, Anthropic, Krebs, CISA, Dark Reading, and more)
• Pollinations.ai: free unlimited AI-generated images — Groq writes the prompt, Stable Diffusion generates the image
• Self-engagement: bot likes, reposts, and comments on every post right after publishing to boost velocity
• All posts get an image — no more text-only meme formats
• 13 AI/Security post formats: hot takes, forced-choice polls, comparison questions, community hooks, threads, and more
• Self-comment is now stylistically distinct from the original post
• Workflows hardcoded to ai_security_feeds.json, 30-minute timeout

v0.4.0

What's new

Engagement improvements

• Threads — AI generates 6-tweet threads via Groq (30% of meme posts). Each thread has a hook, numbered body tweets, and a strong closer.
• Link-in-reply — News posts now tweet headline + image first (no link), then reply with the article URL. Keeps links off the main tweet for better algorithmic reach.
• ReplyTo — Bot replies to its own tweets to seed the conversation chain.

Meme images

• memegen.link replaces Imgflip as the primary meme image source — free, no auth, 20 dev-culture templates. Imgflip remains as fallback.
• Fixed URL encoding: strips newlines and control characters from meme text before building the URL.

AI post formats

• Added: `question`, `storytelling`, `educational`, `news_reaction`
• Total formats: 10 (up from 6)

Reliability

• Media upload now polls for completion instead of fixed sleep — fixes tweets stuck at draft when image upload is slow.
• Thread composer uses last available textarea instead of hardcoded index.
• Workflow timeout bumped to 20 min; screenshots uploaded on every run (not just failures)."

v0.3.0 — Images, Memes & Multi-Account

Major feature release adding image support, AI-generated meme posts, and a second Twitter account workflow.

What's new

Tweet images
News posts now automatically attach the article's thumbnail image when the RSS feed provides one. Tweets with images consistently outperform text-only posts.

AI meme posts (Groq + Imgflip)
New POST_MODE=meme and POST_MODE=mixed modes generate personality-driven posts using Groq's llama-3.3-70b-versatile model across 6 formats:

• Dev humor ("it works on my machine")
• Hot takes ("Unpopular opinion: ...")
• Relatable observations ("me at 9am vs me debugging at 11pm")
• Polls ("🅰️ Vim 🅱️ VS Code")
• Thread starters ("Things nobody tells you about Kubernetes 🧵")
• Trending reactions (reacts to a live headline with humor)

Meme posts attach a generated image via the Imgflip API using classic templates (Drake, Distracted Boyfriend, Expanding Brain, UNO Draw 25, and more).

Second Twitter account
New post_tech.yml workflow runs a separate tech-focused account using data/tech_feeds.json (143 feeds: tech + cybersecurity + science) in mixed mode — news + memes.

GitHub Variables support
Non-sensitive config (POST_MODE, FEEDS_FILE, MAX_TWEETS_PER_RUN, etc.) moved to GitHub Variables. Only credentials and API keys remain as Secrets.

Browser automation refactor
Tweet() and TweetWithMedia() now share a single launchSession() core, eliminating duplicated browser setup code.

Setup additions

New secrets: GROQ_API_KEY, IMGFLIP_USERNAME, IMGFLIP_PASSWORD, TECH_TWITTER_*
New variables: POST_MODE, FEEDS_FILE, CATEGORY, MAX_ARTICLE_AGE_HOURS, TWEET_DELAY_SECONDS, MAX_TWEETS_PER_RUN

Both Groq and Imgflip are free tiers — no credit card required.

v0.2.0 — News Bot

What's new

290 curated RSS feeds across 9 categories
World, Tech, Cybersecurity, Business, Science, Environment, Health, Space, and Africa — sourced from Reuters, BBC, AP, TechCrunch, Wired, Krebs on Security, Bloomberg, Nature, NASA, and 280+ more.

Smart deduplication
Articles are hashed and stored in seen_articles.json so the same story is never tweeted twice, even across restarts.

Category filtering
Set CATEGORY=cybersecurity (or any of the 9 categories) to focus the bot on a single topic.

Tweet cap per run
MAX_TWEETS_PER_RUN (default 5) prevents flooding on first run or after a long gap.

Dual run modes

• RUN_ONCE=true — single poll then exit, designed for GitHub Actions / cron
• Default — continuous polling loop for self-hosted / Docker deployments

Configurable via env vars
POLL_INTERVAL_MINUTES, MAX_ARTICLE_AGE_HOURS, TWEET_DELAY_SECONDS, MAX_TWEETS_PER_RUN

GitHub Actions workflow updated
Runs every 2 hours with a 3-hour article lookback window to ensure no stories are missed between runs.

Breaking changes

• HUGGINGFACE_API_KEY and POST_MODE are no longer used and can be removed from your secrets
• data/templates.json is no longer used
• TWITTER_COOKIES must be a single-line JSON array (no surrounding quotes, no newlines)

v0.1.0 - Initial Release

First Release

The Twitter Tech Bot is live! An automated bot that posts tech content to your Twitter/X account 5 times a day — completely free using GitHub Actions.

What's included

• AI-generated posts via Hugging Face Inference API (Qwen2.5)
• RSS feed posts from TechCrunch, Hacker News, The Verge, Ars Technica, and Dev.to
• Template-based posts — tech quotes, tips, facts, and dev humor
• Browser automation via go-rod with cookie-based session (bypasses bot detection)
• GitHub Actions workflow running automatically 5x daily
• Debug screenshots uploaded as artifacts on failure

Getting Started

See the README for the full setup guide — no coding experience required.