read-grok-shared-link

name	read-grok-shared-link
description	Read grok.com/share/* via Aside REPL openTab.
allowed-tools	["Bash","Read"]
context	inline

Reading Grok Shared Conversation Links

The Grok share page (https://grok.com/share/<shareLinkId>) is a Next.js / Turbopack React app. The conversation is held in client-side React state, NOT in the initial HTML. All "normal" extraction paths return an empty / nearly-empty document:

Path	What you get	Why it fails
terminal: curl <share-url>	HTML shell only (Next.js bundle, GTM, Sentry, no conversation body)	React app needs hydration
web_extract(<share-url>)	Empty / error — DDGS is search-only in this runtime; Firecrawl not configured	Same root cause
browser_navigate(<share-url>)	Returns (empty page) with element_count: 0	The browser tool snapshots BEFORE the React app hydrates; first response is the empty shell
aside repl openTab(<share-url>) + 8s wait + body.innerText	Full conversation text	Works — Aside waits for the page to settle, then the JS DOM has the messages

When to fire

Trigger this skill when all three of these hold:

1. The user pastes a grok.com/share/<shareLinkId> URL.
2. terminal: curl <url> returns the Next.js shell (Next.js chunks, GTM, Sentry baggage, React server-component scripts) without any conversation body.
3. web_extract(<url>) and browser_navigate(<url>) both return empty / (empty page).

If the user has already pasted the conversation text in the chat, skip this skill.

Recipe (Aside browser, headless)

# 1. Confirm Aside is alive
aside --version                     # 1.26.709.1533+
aside account list                 # should show * u0 $[e-mail] signed in

# 2. Open the share page in Aside
cat > /tmp/grok_fetch.js <<'JS'
const p = await openTab('https://grok.com/share/<shareLinkId>');
// Wait 6-10 seconds for React to hydrate and the conversation DOM to populate
await new Promise(r => setTimeout(r, 8000));
const text = await page.evaluate(() =>
  document.body ? document.body.innerText : 'NO BODY'
);
console.log('TEXT_LEN:', text.length);
console.log('---FULL TEXT---');
console.log(text);
JS
aside repl "$(cat /tmp/grok_fetch.js)"

Multi-line JS in aside repl MUST go through $(cat file) or a quoted heredoc — bash tokenizes parens / template literals before Aside sees them. See ~/.hermes/skills/aside-browser-default/references/aside-repl-api-gotchas.md § "Multi-line REPL scripts" for the full pattern.

Recipe (Aside browser, scrolling for long threads)

If the conversation is longer than ~10K characters, the messages may be in a virtualized list. The default body.innerText returns the rendered viewport only. To get the full thread:

cat > /tmp/grok_fetch_long.js <<'JS'
const p = await openTab('https://grok.com/share/<shareLinkId>');
await new Promise(r => setTimeout(r, 6000));
// Scroll the message container to the bottom several times to force virtualized list to render
for (let i = 0; i < 6; i++) {
  await page.evaluate(() => {
    const sc = document.querySelector('main, [class*="scroll"], [class*="conversation"]')
               || document.scrollingElement;
    sc.scrollTop = sc.scrollHeight;
  });
  await new Promise(r => setTimeout(r, 1500));
}
const text = await page.evaluate(() => document.body.innerText);
console.log('TEXT_LEN:', text.length);
console.log('---FULL TEXT---');
console.log(text);
JS
aside repl "$(cat /tmp/grok_fetch_long.js)"

For very long threads (>50K chars), the output may be truncated by terminal capture. In that case, dump the text to a file via the page-side evaluate → return as a base64 string → decode locally:

cat > /tmp/grok_dump.js <<'JS'
const p = await openTab('https://grok.com/share/<shareLinkId>');
await new Promise(r => setTimeout(r, 8000));
for (let i = 0; i < 6; i++) {
  await page.evaluate(() => {
    const sc = document.querySelector('main, [class*="scroll"], [class*="conversation"]')
               || document.scrollingElement;
    sc.scrollTop = sc.scrollHeight;
  });
  await new Promise(r => setTimeout(r, 1500));
}
const text = await page.evaluate(() => document.body.innerText);
console.log(Buffer.from(text).toString('base64'));
JS
aside repl "$(cat /tmp/grok_dump.js)" | tail -n +2 | base64 -d > /tmp/grok_thread.txt
wc -l /tmp/grok_thread.txt

What you get

• The full conversation as plain text — every user message, every assistant response, with the timing metadata ("Worked for 16s") inline.
• The page sidebar (history list, profile info) is also in body.innerText. Use String.split('Toggle Sidebar')[1] to strip it, or filter the text you need.
• The conversation is in chronological order from the first user message.

Pitfalls

• No closeAllTabs() in the REPL (verified 2026-07-31). Don't try to call it — wrap in try/catch if cleanup matters, or accept the tab stays open.
• Aside REPL is stateless — every aside repl call is a fresh process. Variables declared in one invocation don't persist. This is fine for the read-only fetch pattern, just be aware.
• Stealth warning — Aside may show a "Running WITHOUT residential proxies" warning. This is informational only.
• Bot detection / auth wall — if the body.innerText returns the sign-in wall content (not the conversation), the active Aside profile doesn't have access. Switch profiles with aside --account u0 if needed. The user's Profile 0 = $[e-mail] is the default.
• Don't try browser_click / browser_type from aside repl — they don't exist in the REPL. The REPL is read-only. For OAuth or interactive flows, drop to the full mcp__aside-mcp__* tools if your runtime exposes them.

When to skip this skill

• The user has pasted the conversation text directly in the chat, no fetch needed.
• The URL is a non-Grok share link (ChatGPT, Gemini, Claude, etc.) → different mechanism. For ChatGPT shared chats try chatgpt.com/share/<id> curl with a normal user-agent; for Gemini try web_extract; for Claude there's no public share mechanism.
• The user wants a screenshot, not the text → use annotatedScreenshot() in the Aside REPL after the page hydrates.

Verification (quick)

aside --version                              # 1.26.x
aside account list | head -3                  # signed-in profile
aside repl "console.log('ok')"                # REPL works

If any fails, fall back to the next-most-likely path:

Failure	Fallback
Aside not installed	curl -fsSL https://releases.aside.com/install.sh | bash
Aside signed out	aside account list to confirm; user signs in via Aside GUI
Page returns auth wall	Report to user, ask for plain-text paste
body.innerText returns sidebar only	Conversation is virtualized — use the scrolling recipe above
Still empty after 8s	Wait longer (15s) or check if the shareLinkId is valid

Cross-references

• Aside skill (canonical): ~/.hermes/skills/aside-browser-default/SKILL.md — full Aside CLI / REPL / MCP surface, headless default, OAuth capture pattern.
• Aside REPL gotchas: ~/.hermes/skills/aside-browser-default/references/aside-repl-api-gotchas.md — why multi-line JS needs $(cat file), why screenshot() doesn't exist, etc.
• Browser-headless default: ~/.claude/skills/browser-headless-default/SKILL.md — broader headless policy; this skill is the Grok-specific instance.
• Tavily-disabled rule: ~/.claude/CLAUDE.md section "Tavily is disabled" — DDGS is search-only, can't extract Grok share pages.

Provenance

• v1.0.0 (2026-07-31): Created per Jeffrey's explicit request in Slack C0AUXSVFSA2/1785551502.183539 — "Use /skillify to remember how to read grok threads and shared links in general too in parallel." Triggered by the campaign-bible task where 4 prior extraction paths (curl, web_extract, browser_navigate, OG metadata) all returned 0-N chars of usable content, and Aside REPL with openTab + 8s wait + body.innerText returned the full 60K-character thread in one shot.