# DavidBuchanan314/tweetable-polyglot-png

Pack up to 3MB of data into a tweetable PNG polyglot file.

Repository: https://github.com/DavidBuchanan314/tweetable-polyglot-png
Canonical: https://ross.abutalabs.com/products/tweetable-polyglot-png
Language: Python
License: MIT
License Family: permissive
Topics: polyglot, polyglot-files, png, zip, twitter, steganography
Last push: 2021-08-11T02:47:58+00:00

## Health v2 (maintenance only)
Score: 32/100 (v2, computed 2026-09-03T02:20:16.233290+00:00)
- activity 0, release rhythm 35, longevity 100
- inputs: {"age_days": 1996, "days_push": 1848, "days_rel": null, "gap_med": null, "n_releases_24m": 0}
- flags: no_releases
- formula: round(0.45*activity + 0.35*rhythm + 0.20*longevity); archived -> min(score, 10)

## Adoption (not part of the score)
Stars 2608, forks 153 (observed 2026-08-28T04:07:04.153817+00:00)

## What it is
A Python tool that packs up to 3MB of arbitrary data into a PNG polyglot file that survives upload to Twitter and other image hosts. It exploits the fact that Twitter preserves trailing data in the PNG IDAT DEFLATE stream when the image avoids re-encoding.

## Use cases
- hide a zip file inside a tweetable png
- smuggle files through twitter as images
- create png polyglot files that are also valid zips
- embed data in images that survives image host reprocessing
- share files via social media image uploads

## When to choose
- you need to pass data through Twitter, Imgur, Discord, or GitHub image hosting
- you want a valid PNG that is simultaneously a valid ZIP or other file format
- you're researching steganography or polyglot file techniques

## When to avoid
- you need steganography that hides data from visual inspection of the image itself (this appends data, it doesn't blend it in)
- your target platform re-encodes images, like Reddit
- you need files larger than ~3MB

## Facets
- artifact type: cli-tool
- maturity: maintenance
- function: image-processing, serialization, security, file-system
- domain: security, files, image-processing, social-media
- platform: python, cli, cross-platform
- tags: polyglot-files, steganography, png, zip, twitter, data-hiding

## Member repositories
- DavidBuchanan314/tweetable-polyglot-png (main) score 32

## Provenance
- Observed fields: from GitHub, fetched 2026-08-28T04:07:04.153817+00:00.
- Health v2: computed from the inputs above; adoption is never an input.
- Inferred fields (summary, facets, guidance): AI-extracted, prompt v1, taxonomy v1, on 2026-08-30T02:20:55.060798+00:00, confidence not recorded.
  - readme: https://github.com/DavidBuchanan314/tweetable-polyglot-png (fetched 2026-08-28T04:07:04.153817+00:00, sha 270c8a25e00f)
- Data as of 2026-08-30T08:39:29.467469+00:00.