Operating procedure

Archive-First X Post Cleanup SOP for Founders and Operators

If your account has years of history, timeline-only deletion is usually incomplete and hard to verify. Archive-first execution solves that by giving stable IDs and a deterministic run order.

This SOP is designed for professional cleanup where profile identity must remain intact while legacy posts, replies, and reposts are removed.

Step 0: Define objective and protected assets

Write this at the top of every run ticket:

• Objective: remove legacy activity that conflicts with current positioning.
• Protected assets: profile photo, banner, bio, links, followers, following.
• Scope: posts, replies, reposts, likes (explicitly selected).

Step 1: Prepare source-of-truth inputs

1. Download and extract latest X archive locally.
2. Capture fresh authenticated headers from your active browser session.
3. Run header validation before any deletion calls.

If headers fail validation, stop and refresh session first. Running deletion logic with stale auth creates false negatives and inconsistent state.

Step 2: Classify content risk before execution

Not all legacy posts carry the same business risk. Use a fast triage model:

• Priority A: legal/reputation exposure, explicit contradictions, aggressive language.
• Priority B: outdated positioning and low-signal noise.
• Priority C: neutral historical content with no current downside.

Delete A first, then B. Review C only if needed.

Step 3: Run archive-driven deletion passes in sequence

Recommended order:

1. Replies and reposts (context-heavy surfaces),
2. Main posts,
3. Likes.

Use bounded retry with backoff. Log each pass with total IDs, success count, failures, and elapsed time.

Step 4: Handle rate limits and transient failures cleanly

Rate-limits are expected in large cleanup operations. Your SOP should include:

• delay between actions,
• automatic wait-on-limit behavior,
• resume support so failed IDs can rerun without restarting from zero.

Step 5: Verify outcomes with a double-check pass

A first pass is not enough for audit confidence. Run verification on a representative sample of historical IDs and classify:

• already removed,
• removed during verification,
• inconclusive (auth/rate/network).

This is the fastest way to separate true residual content from temporary UI lag.

Step 6: Validate externally and close the run

1. Check profile from two devices and one logged-out view.
2. Confirm protected assets remained unchanged.
3. Save run summary and outstanding IDs (if any).
4. Schedule 24h follow-up check for propagation edge cases.

SOP output format (recommended)

• Run timestamp (UTC)
• Scope and protected assets
• Pass metrics by content type
• Verification metrics and recommendation
• Final status: complete / follow-up required