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Skillsreddit-research

reddit-research

Writing & research

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Updated 10-15 20:29

About this skill

Reddit research

Look up subreddit posts and comments, a single post's full comment thread, keyword search results, a public user's post/comment history, and hot/new/rising/top trends — all as normalized JSON from the Crawlora API, no Reddit scraping or unofficial client libraries.

Tool scope and data flow

The optional shell helper is the only command this skill asks to run. It makes GET requests only to the documented, allowlisted Crawlora routes. When invoked, it reads CRAWLORA_API_KEY and sends it as an x-api-key header over HTTPS to api.crawlora.net; it does not send the key to Reddit. It briefly writes a mode-600 curl config under TMPDIR and removes it when the command exits. It does not inspect other environment variables, enumerate files, install software, or run with elevated privileges. Queries, subreddit/user identifiers, and requested post targets are sent to the Crawlora API; avoid confidential or sensitive investigation terms.

The /reddit/leads route is a distinct, user-requested workflow: it ranks public posts by product/service buying intent. Use it only when the user asks for lead discovery, describe that post-level scoring in the output, and do not infer sensitive traits or rank people for high-impact decisions.

When to use this skill

  • "What's talking about right now?"
  • "Pull the comments on this Reddit post/thread."
  • "Search Reddit for posts about <topic/product/brand>."
  • "What has posted or commented recently?"
  • "What's trending on Reddit today?" or "What's the sentiment in r/?"
  • Brand-mention monitoring, community research, or competitor sentiment tracking on Reddit.
  • For stock-specific Reddit discussion tied to a matched market window, use reddit-stock-sentiment-research when installed.

Setup (one-time)

  • Get a free Crawlora API key (2,000 credits/mo, no card) at https://crawlora.net.
  • Set CRAWLORA_API_KEY in the environment before running the helper.
  • The helper reads CRAWLORA_API_KEY from the environment and sends requests to https://api.crawlora.net/api/v1. Missing/invalid key → 401.

How it works

  1. Search — /reddit/search for keyword-matched posts, optionally scoped to a subreddit.
  2. One post + its thread — /reddit/post/{id} for the post itself, /reddit/comments/{id} for its public comments (add include_metrics=true on either for net score/upvote-ratio/award data at 3 credits instead of 1).
  3. Browse a subreddit — /reddit/subreddit/{subreddit}/posts (hot/new/ top/rising), /reddit/subreddit/{subreddit}/comments (latest flat comments feed), and /reddit/subreddit/{subreddit}/about for metadata + sample posts.
  4. Multi-subreddit feed — /reddit/subreddits/posts with a comma-separated subreddits list (max 10) for a combined hot/new/top feed.
  5. User history — /reddit/user/{username}/posts and /reddit/user/{username}/comments for a public user's submitted/comment feeds.
  6. Domain mentions — /reddit/domain/{domain}/posts for public posts linking to a given hostname.
  7. Trends — /reddit/trends for broad hot/new/rising/top feeds; for a single subreddit's trend, use /reddit/subreddit/{subreddit}/posts with sort=hot|new|rising|top instead.

Full endpoint list, methods, and params: reference/endpoints.md.

Calling the API

# Search + subreddit browse:
scripts/crawlora.sh /reddit/search q="web scraping" | jq '.'
scripts/crawlora.sh /reddit/subreddit/programming/posts sort=top time=week | jq '.'

# Post + comment thread:
scripts/crawlora.sh /reddit/post/1abcxyz include_metrics=true | jq '.'
scripts/crawlora.sh /reddit/comments/1abcxyz sort=top limit=50 | jq '.'

# User history + trends:
scripts/crawlora.sh /reddit/user/spez/posts | jq '.'
scripts/crawlora.sh /reddit/trends sort=rising | jq '.'

# Explicit buying-intent lead discovery from public posts:
scripts/crawlora.sh /reddit/leads q="looking for a project management tool" | jq '.'

Use scripts/crawlora.sh for all requests; it keeps the API key out of command-line arguments.

Endpoint reference

See reference/endpoints.md for all Reddit endpoints this skill uses.

Examples

  • Community sentiment research: /reddit/subreddit/{subreddit}/posts + /reddit/subreddit/{subreddit}/comments for a topic-relevant subreddit, scan post titles and comment text for recurring sentiment/pain points.
  • Thread deep-dive: /reddit/post/{id} for the original post plus /reddit/comments/{id}?include_metrics=true for the full discussion with net score and award counts, to summarize a viral thread.
  • Brand-mention sweep: /reddit/search q="<brand>" across all of Reddit or scoped with subreddit=, paginated via the returned after token, to count and read every public mention.

Notes & limits

  • Credits / pay-on-success: billed only on 2xx; free tier 2,000 credits/mo. Key at https://crawlora.net.
  • Public data only — public posts/comments/subreddits; no login, no private content. Respect Reddit's terms.
  • Security: key lives in CRAWLORA_API_KEY only — never hardcode, query-param, or commit it.
  • Anonymous-page limits: subscriber counts, icons, and banners are omitted from /reddit/subreddit/{subreddit}/about (not available on anonymous Reddit pages); exact upvote/downvote totals, upvote ratios, and share/repost/ view counts are estimated or unavailable without include_metrics=true, and even then Reddit fuzzes voting data so figures are approximate.
  • Metrics cost more: include_metrics=true on /reddit/post/{id} or /reddit/comments/{id} switches to the anonymous HTML page and costs 3 credits instead of 1; large comment threads may only expose an initial subset in that mode.
  • Throttling: most list endpoints return 503 with a Retry-After header when Reddit is temporarily throttling the request — wait that many seconds and retry rather than treating it as a hard failure.
  • List endpoints are cursor-paginated via after — follow the returned cursor to walk beyond the first page (defaults to 25 results, clamps to 100).