Reddit Engagement Skill

Search Reddit for relevant discussions, read threads with full comment trees, and draft authentic community responses.

When to Use

• Find Reddit discussions about your product, industry, or competitors
• Monitor subreddits for engagement opportunities
• Read a specific thread and its comments before responding
• Draft helpful, non-promotional responses to community questions
• Social listening for brand mentions or relevant topics

Scripts

Search Reddit

bun .claude/skills/reddit/scripts/reddit-search.ts "<query>" [options]

Option	Default	Description
--subreddit=NAME	all	Restrict to a specific subreddit
--sort=VALUE	relevance	hot, new, relevance, comments, top
--time=VALUE	week	hour, day, week, month, year, all
--limit=N	25	Number of results (max 100)

Examples:

# Broad search
bun .claude/skills/reddit/scripts/reddit-search.ts "ai agents for business" --sort=new --time=week

# Targeted subreddit search
bun .claude/skills/reddit/scripts/reddit-search.ts "workflow automation" --subreddit=smallbusiness --time=month

# Find recent hot discussions
bun .claude/skills/reddit/scripts/reddit-search.ts "best ai tools 2026" --sort=hot --limit=10

Read Thread + Comments

bun .claude/skills/reddit/scripts/reddit-thread.ts "<url_or_permalink>" [--depth=N]

Fetches the full post body and nested comment tree. Use before drafting a response.

Examples:

# Read a thread with 3 levels of comment nesting
bun .claude/skills/reddit/scripts/reddit-thread.ts "https://reddit.com/r/SaaS/comments/abc123/post_title/"

# Shallow read (top-level comments only)
bun .claude/skills/reddit/scripts/reddit-thread.ts "/r/artificial/comments/xyz789/some_post/" --depth=1

Workflow

Phase 1: Discovery

Run searches across relevant subreddits:

# Broad search across all of Reddit
bun .claude/skills/reddit/scripts/reddit-search.ts "your topic" --sort=new --time=week

# Targeted subreddit searches
bun .claude/skills/reddit/scripts/reddit-search.ts "your topic" --subreddit=relevant_sub --time=month

Phase 2: Qualify Opportunities

Evaluate each result for engagement potential:

Prioritize:

• Questions asking for tool/product recommendations
• Pain points your product solves
• Active discussions (5+ comments, growing)
• Comparison threads

Skip:

• Threads older than 2 weeks (stale)
• Posts with 0 comments and low score (no audience)
• Rant/complaint threads
• Already-resolved questions

Phase 3: Deep-Read Promising Threads

bun .claude/skills/reddit/scripts/reddit-thread.ts "<permalink>"

Understand: What is OP asking? What answers exist? Is there a gap you can fill? What's the tone?

Phase 4: Draft Response

Guidelines:

• Be genuinely helpful first, promotional second (or not at all)
• Write like a knowledgeable community member, not a marketer
• Share specific, actionable advice
• Only mention your product if directly relevant
• Use "I've been using..." or "We built..." framing
• Match the subreddit's culture and tone

Structure:

1. Acknowledge the problem
2. Share useful insight (valuable regardless of your product)
3. Mention your product only if directly relevant
4. Offer to help further

Phase 5: Report

Present findings as a structured engagement report with search queries, top opportunities, draft responses, and recommended follow-up searches.

How It Works

Uses Reddit's public JSON API — no authentication or API keys needed. Simply appends .json to Reddit URLs to get structured data.

Rate limits: ~10 requests/minute unauthenticated. Scripts include a custom User-Agent header. If you hit 429 errors, wait 60 seconds.

Output

• Search: Returns JSON array of posts with title, subreddit, score, comment count, age, and text preview. Also prints a human-readable summary.
• Thread: Prints formatted post body + nested comment tree. Outputs structured JSON to stderr for programmatic use.