About

Imported from terminalskills/skills (skills/sherlock/SKILL.md). Install upstream with npx skills add terminalskills/skills --skill sherlock. Copyright stays with the author (MIT).

Sherlock

Name: sherlock
Author: terminalskills

Overview

Sherlock searches for a username across 400+ social networks and websites simultaneously. It reports which platforms have an account with that username, useful for OSINT investigations, brand monitoring, and digital footprint analysis.

Instructions

Installation

pip install sherlock-project

Basic Search

sherlock targetusername

This checks 400+ sites and outputs results to terminal plus a text file.

Output Formats

# CSV output
sherlock targetusername --csv

# Save to specific file
sherlock targetusername --output results.txt

# JSON for programmatic use
sherlock targetusername --json results.json

Advanced Options

# Search specific sites only
sherlock targetusername --site twitter --site github --site instagram

# Set timeout (seconds) per site
sherlock targetusername --timeout 10

# Use proxy
sherlock targetusername --proxy socks5://127.0.0.1:1080

# Multiple usernames
sherlock user1 user2 user3

Python API

import sherlock_project
from sherlock_project import sherlock

results = sherlock.search("targetusername")
for site, result in results.items():
    if result["status"] == "Claimed":
        print(f"{site}: {result['url_user']}")

Examples

Example 1: Find all accounts for a username

$ sherlock johndoe2024
[+] GitHub: https://github.com/johndoe2024
[+] Twitter: https://twitter.com/johndoe2024
[+] Instagram: https://instagram.com/johndoe2024
[+] Reddit: https://reddit.com/user/johndoe2024
[-] Facebook: Not Found
[+] LinkedIn: https://linkedin.com/in/johndoe2024
...
Found 47 accounts across 400+ sites

Example 2: Brand monitoring

$ sherlock mycompanyname --csv
# Outputs CSV with all platforms where the brand name is taken
# Useful for trademark protection and consistent brand presence

Guidelines

Always verify results manually — false positives occur on sites with generic URL patterns
Respect platform terms of service and rate limits
Use --timeout 5 for faster scans (some sites are slow)
For investigations, combine with other OSINT tools (theHarvester, amass) for comprehensive results
Consider ethical implications — this tool is for legitimate research, not harassment
Proxy support helps avoid IP-based rate limiting on repeated searches

Use it

Copy one of these into your project. Installing also returns the manifest and these snippets.

yaml

targets:
  - https://api.opensmartroute.ai/api/v1/registry/terminalskills-skills-sherlock/manifest   # or paste the manifest below

Manifest

An Open Capability Manifest: the router reads it to know what this does, what it costs and when to pick it.

terminalskills-skills-sherlock.ocm.jsonjson

{
  "ocm": "1",
  "id": "terminalskills-skills-sherlock",
  "kind": "skill",
  "name": "sherlock",
  "description": "Search for social media accounts by username across 400+ platforms using Sherlock. Use when: OSINT investigations, finding online presence by username, digital footprint analysis, brand monitoring across social platforms.",
  "publisher": "terminalskills",
  "version": "1.0.0",
  "capabilities": {
    "domains": [
      "marketing",
      "math"
    ],
    "tags": [
      "skill-md",
      "osint",
      "social-media",
      "username-search",
      "skills-sh"
    ],
    "languages": [
      "en"
    ]
  },
  "quality_prior": 0.6,
  "examples": [
    "Search for social media accounts by username across 400+ platforms using Sherlock. Use when: OSINT investigations, finding online presence by username, digital footprint analysis, brand monitoring across social platforms."
  ],
  "primary": false,
  "metadata": {
    "source": {
      "provider": "skills.sh",
      "repository": "https://github.com/terminalskills/skills",
      "path": "skills/sherlock/SKILL.md",
      "ref": "HEAD",
      "url": "https://github.com/terminalskills/skills/blob/HEAD/skills/sherlock/SKILL.md",
      "key": "terminalskills/skills/skills/sherlock/SKILL.md"
    },
    "compatibility": "Python 3.8+",
    "license": "MIT"
  },
  "instructions": "# Sherlock\n\n## Overview\n\nSherlock searches for a username across 400+ social networks and websites simultaneously. It reports which platforms have an account with that username, useful for OSINT investigations, brand monitoring, and digital footprint analysis.\n\n## Instructions\n\n### Installation\n\n```bash\npip install sherlock-project\n```\n\n### Basic Search\n\n```bash\nsherlock targetusername\n```\n\nThis checks 400+ sites and outputs results to terminal plus a text file.\n\n### Output Formats\n\n```bash\n# CSV output\nsherlock targetusername --csv\n\n# Save to specific file\nsherlock targetusername --output res",
  "cost": {
    "context_tokens": 587
  }
}

Fetch it by URL: GET /api/v1/registry/terminalskills-skills-sherlock/manifest?version=1.0.0

Reviews

Star ratings from people who tried it. One review per account; edit yours any time.

No reviews yet. Install it, try it, and be the first to rate it.