Live Feed
The Live Feed is the leftmost column of the dashboard. It's a real-time stream of every tweet posted by the accounts Patera is tracking. Newest first. Engagement metrics tick live without a page refresh.
This page describes the Live Feed as it appears in the default Command Deck layout. A Layout options dropdown in the dashboard header switches the whole dashboard between six persona-tuned layouts, which rearrange or resize the feed (see Dashboard layouts below).
What each row shows
For every tweet in the feed:
- Author: handle, display name, avatar, blue-check status, follower count.
- Tweet content: full text. Embedded URLs unfurl into preview cards (title, description, image).
- Media: photos, videos, GIFs rendered inline.
- Metrics: likes, replies, reposts, views, bookmarks. These tick up live as the tweet picks up engagement. The likes metric is a working like / unlike heart, not just a counter (see Liking a post).
- Tweet type: flagged as a reply, retweet, quote-tweet, article; or original post.
- Time: relative ("28s ago") and absolute on hover. Clock-skew corrected (see How real-time tracking works).
- Action buttons: Transfer to AI Actions, open on X. Clicking the tweet body text (but not its links) opens the View Comments popout (see Read the replies).
If a tweet is a reply or quote, Patera also pulls the parent / quoted tweet so you can read the context inline.
Liking a post
The heart on every tweet card is a real like / unlike toggle. Click it to like the post as your currently selected X account; click again to unlike. The heart fills solid red with a soft glow and a springy pop the moment you click, before the network call returns and the card remembers which posts you liked across reloads.
A few specifics:
- The number next to the heart stays the author's aggregate like count. Your like does not bump it (matching how X displays it).
- The tooltip reads Like as your selected account when idle and Unlike (remove your like) once you've liked it.
- The like posts from the account you have selected for posting (see Multi-account posting). With no X account selected you get a toast telling you to pick one first and nothing else happens.
- Likes run concurrently, not through the serial post worker and never count against your reply or analysis quota (see Plans).
- A like gets its own row in the Execute Queue and its own toast. A failed like rolls the heart back to idle.
The same heart appears in Top Performers, on the original-tweet row of each AI Actions card and on every reply inside the View Comments popout below. To like the target post automatically whenever you send a reply or quote, see Auto like posts on the AI Actions page.
Read the replies
Click a tweet's body text (clicking a link inside it still navigates instead) to open the View Comments popout. It fills roughly 80% of the screen on desktop and goes near full-screen on small viewports.
The popout is two columns:
- Left: the focal tweet, pinned in place. It does not scroll with the comments.
- Right: the dominant, scrollable column that streams in the post's replies as they load.
While the replies load you see skeleton placeholders. The right column also handles the other states for you:
| State | What you see |
|---|---|
| Loading | Three shimmer skeleton cards while the first page streams in. |
| Error | The error message with a Retry button. |
| Empty | No comments yet. |
| More available | A Load more button at the bottom that pulls the next page. |
| Capped | Showing the first N comments once the server stops at its cap. |
This popout is for reading the thread. Each reply shows like, reply, retweet and quote controls, but acting on a reply happens through the AI Actions flow: choosing reply, retweet or quote on a comment spawns a fresh AI Actions row aimed at that comment and the like heart works exactly as it does in the feed. Folding a thread's replies into a generated reply is driven by the per-row Analyse comments button on each AI action, not by this popout (see Analysing the replies thread).
Newest-first, capped at 100
The feed shows up to 100 tweets at a time, newest at the top. Older tweets roll off the bottom as new ones arrive. There's no infinite scroll. Patera holds a slightly larger pool in memory (used by Top Performers) but the feed itself stays focused on now.
Live metric updates
You don't need to do anything to keep the feed fresh. Likes, replies, reposts, views, bookmarks: all tick up via server push. A tweet you saw at 12 likes a moment ago will be at 47 if it's taking off. No refresh required.
Hover-pause
Hover over the feed and incoming tweets queue silently in the background. Move the mouse away and the queue drains in. This means you can read a tweet without it being yanked off-screen by the next arrival.
Strict mode
A toggle in the Live Feed options labelled Skip Cached Tweets drops anything that didn't come straight from the live socket. Useful when you only want this-second activity and nothing back-filled from metric updates on older tweets.
Customising the feed
In the column header you can:
- Open Filters (details here) to scope what the feed shows.
- Open Feed Options to toggle hover-pause, strict mode, max-count, column density.
- Pop out the column into its own window for a multi-monitor setup.
To hide a specific account from the feed without untracking it, hover its name on any tweet row; a small ⊘ button appears. One click excludes the account instantly. Manage the resulting blocklist from the Customise modal under Excluded Accounts; full details in Filters.
Dashboard layouts
The Layout options dropdown in the dashboard header switches the entire dashboard between six layouts, each tuned for a different way of working. The feed is rearranged or resized to suit each one:
| Layout | Tuned for | What it does to the feed |
|---|---|---|
| Command Deck | The Operator | The classic three-column deck: Live Feed, Top Performers, AI Actions side by side. This is the default. |
| Reply Workspace | The Engager | A narrow feed rail next to a roomy reply station. |
| Post Composer | The Creator | A trend rail feeding a composer: click a trend, write, post. |
| Signal Scanner | The Analyst | A nested filter rail over a wide results grid. |
| Live Feed Theatre | The Watcher | Turns the feed into a wide multi-column live wall. |
| Split Desk | The Multitasker | Reply on top, compose on the bottom, both at once. |
Your choice is remembered across reloads. The default stays Command Deck.
Focus mode
The dashboard header has a Focus mode toggle next to Layout options and the restore-filters control. Turn it on and the Top Performers column wipes away with a smooth animation (about 600ms) while the Live Feed expands to fill the freed space. AI Actions stays put. Click the toggle again to bring Top Performers back.
A few details:
- On and off is a single persisted setting that survives reloads.
- The idle button shows an animated snake-trace border to flag the feature; it switches to a solid accent ring when active.
- The toggle appears only in the dashboard Command Deck layout, since the other layouts have their own arrangement.
Where the data comes from
Every row in the Live Feed arrives over Patera's tracking WebSocket, which pushes new tweets and metric updates as they happen. See How real-time tracking works for the architecture.