This is a great, very clearly written tutorial!

I am just wondering about the init command — does it really have to be this slow? It seems to me like it is sending a separate API call for each account ID (hence the 180 requests / 15 minutes limit) — I am not very good with Python so I am just guessing from the screenname.dat file it produces that it is calling GET users/lookup.

I am thinking it might be possible to send batch requests (for up to 100 users) — that way you could get details of 100*180 accounts in the 15-minute window.