Weibo API: read a Weibo (微博) post as text — without the open platform or a scraper
Short answer: Weibo's official open platform needs a developer account and an app review, and a scraper has to get past Weibo's visitor check, keep a session alive and still leave you with media URLs instead of text. LinkDigest reads a public Weibo post from its link and returns what an LLM can use: the post text, author and date, repost / comment / like counts, every photo described and its text read, the video's speech and on-screen text with times, the top comments, and key points each backed by a quote checked against the post. No Weibo account, no cookies.
Disclosure: LinkDigest is the author's own service.
One call
curl -X POST https://linkdigest.dev/api/v1/digest \
-H "Authorization: Bearer ld_live_..." \
-H "Content-Type: application/json" \
-d '{"url": "https://m.weibo.cn/detail/5351369302084798", "format": "json"}'
A video takes 30–90 seconds, so the first answer may be 202 with a poll_url: GET it about 15 seconds later with the same header (or send the same POST again — it joins the read and bills once).
What came back (a live read, 2026-11-01)
The post above is a 61-second video. The read returned:
| Author and date | 屿鹿 · 2026-10-07 |
| Counts as of the read | 4,761 likes · 547 comments · 218 reposts |
| On-screen text | 29 timed fragments — the dialogue subtitles and the comment screenshots in the frames |
| Key points | 5, each with a quote checked word for word |
| Top comments | the first 8 of 547, with like and reply counts |
| Coverage | "no speech transcript: video has no audio track"; "the top 8 of 547 comments read" |
It cost 3 credits. Reading the same post again — through any of its address forms — costs nothing.
Addresses it accepts
weibo.com/<user>/<post id> (the desktop address bar), m.weibo.cn/detail/<numeric id> and m.weibo.cn/status/<id> all name the same post and share one cache entry. A t.cn short link has to be opened first and its expanded address pasted.
From an agent
The same read is a tool in Claude Code, Cursor and any MCP client — add https://linkdigest.dev/mcp with your key and paste the Weibo link. Setup per client is on the Weibo platform page; the full response is in the API docs. For Xiaohongshu and Douyin, the same call works — see the Xiaohongshu (RedNote) API post and the Douyin transcript post.
Limits, said plainly
- A post only followers can see (关注可见, 好友圈) is refused and not charged; nothing is guessed. If it carries a video, the browser extension can read it from your own signed-in tab.
- Comments are the top ones the share page shows, not the whole thread.
- Nothing is posted, liked or followed: LinkDigest reads public posts and stops there.