The archive · Product Ideas · Product decision · 2020–2022
Twemex made Twitter searchable as a personal memex from inside its own sidebar
A day of hacking gave Geoffrey Litt live search over his own tweets inside Twitter; the extension passed 20,000 users and sold to Tweet Hunter.
Geoffrey Litt
What it had to solve
Geoffrey Litt used Twitter as a note-taking tool — weaving threads that quoted and linked his older tweets — but retrieving a past tweet meant opening a new tab and typing raw advanced-search queries. Rather than build a separate notes app, he decided to patch the page he already lived in.
How it works
Twemex began in 2020 as Geoffrey Litt's personal hack on Twitter. Litt was a heavy user of Twitter as a memex — weaving threads that quote and connect his own older tweets — but finding a past tweet meant leaving what he was writing, opening a new tab and typing an advanced-search query like 'from:geoffreylitt spreadsheets'. He spent a day building an extension that added a sidebar where he could type a search and get instant results from his own past tweets.
The implementation was deliberately simple: the extension prepended 'from:<username>' to the same search API the Twitter web client used and rendered results live in the sidebar. Later versions added widgets tied to browsing context — Highlights showed the most-liked tweets of the account being viewed, and shortcuts such as /me, /user and /follows searched your own tweets, the current user's tweets or the tweets of people you follow, letting Litt treat Twitter as a personal search engine of trusted opinions.
After months of personal use, screenshots drew requests, so Litt expanded a beta to over 100 people by DMing a sideload link — a manual channel that gathered unusually rich feedback — then shipped through the Chrome Web Store. He kept a rule of no servers and no stored data, spending his limited side-project time making the extension feel native enough that people forgot it wasn't part of Twitter. In late 2022 he sold the extension to Tweet Hunter, which kept it free; his January 2023 essay about the experience drew 516 points and 279 comments on Hacker News.
Why it lands
- Improving an app users already open every day removed the adoption problem: Twemex grew as Twitter habits grew, with no separate login or new routine to learn.
- Twitter's own search API was fast enough to power live search, so a one-day prototype delivered value immediately without any backend of his own.
- The no-server, no-data-storage rule kept the side project runnable on nights and weekends, since there was nothing to maintain or leak.
- Context-aware features (the current user's best tweets, /follows) turned a search box into a thinking tool, which is why power users called Twitter broken without it.
- DM-based beta distribution created a casual feedback channel, converting early users into co-designers rather than passive testers.
What it did
Installed users grew around 10–15% a month to over 20,000 with no real marketing; in late 2022 Geoffrey Litt sold Twemex to Tweet Hunter, which kept the core features free. His January 2023 write-up of the extension-first approach drew 516 points and 279 comments on Hacker News.
What you can take
To change your tools you don't need a new app: patching software you already use turns a personal annoyance into a product with built-in distribution — users' host-app habits arrive pre-installed.
Since then
Tweet Hunter, a longtime Twemex user, acquired the extension in late 2022 and kept its original functionality free; its product page still presents the same idea — a sidebar replacing Twitter's distracting panel with Highlights, shortcuts and best-tweet views — now under the name Tweet Hunter X. Geoffrey Litt's essay became a reference point for extension-first side projects: it drew 516 points and 279 comments on Hacker News in January 2023 and a long discussion of platform risk, Chrome Web Store review pain and the tactics for earning native-feeling pixels inside someone else's app.
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