Reddit Insights

Reddit Insights Skill

Reddit is where people complain, compare, and ask for alternatives before they ever fill out a survey. This skill queries that through reddapi.dev: semantic search by meaning across the archive, plus site-wide trend momentum and subreddit lookup, with no Reddit OAuth or registered app.

It reads a third-party index rather than Reddit itself, so it is a research tool, not a substitute for the official API where data provenance matters. It cannot post, cannot read private or quarantined subreddits, and cannot walk live comment trees.

When to Use

• Mining how people describe a problem in their own words, before naming a product or writing copy
• Comparing two tools by what users report after switching between them
• Checking whether a topic is gaining or losing momentum before committing
• Finding which subreddits actually discuss a niche, ahead of reading them

Do not use when: you already have a thread URL (fetch it with web_extract), you need the comment tree, or the query is not in English. The index is English-dominant.

Related: reddit-leads for B2B lead scoring on the same provider, reddit-search-api for a bare endpoint reference.

Prerequisites

• Python 3.9+ (the shipped script is stdlib only, no install step)
• REDDAPI_API_KEY exported in the shell that runs the request

Handling the key:

• Reference it only as $REDDAPI_API_KEY. Never substitute the literal value into a command, a file, a code block, or a reply.
• Never ask the user to paste the key in chat. If they send it anyway, do not repeat it back, do not write it to a file, and suggest rotating it at https://reddapi.dev/account.
• Never echo, print, or log the key, and never commit it.
• If it is unset, stop and tell the user to export it themselves. Do not run that command with a value on their behalf.
• On a failed request, report the HTTP status and the response body only, never the request headers.

Quotas are plan-based, not unlimited, and the monthly allowance is a shared pool: web-app searches, API calls, and lead searches draw on one counter. An invalid or exhausted key returns 429, not 401.

Optional MCP server. reddapi.dev also serves MCP over streamable HTTP at https://reddapi.dev/api/mcp with an Authorization: Bearer header. Set it up explicitly before referring to its tools (reddit_semantic_search, reddit_vector_search, reddit_list_subreddits, reddit_get_subreddit, reddit_get_trends).

How to Run

Call the shipped helper scripts/reddapi.py with the terminal tool:

python3 scripts/reddapi.py semantic "frustrated with project management tools" --limit 100
python3 scripts/reddapi.py semantic "best productivity tools for remote teams" --summary
python3 scripts/reddapi.py vector "AI coding agents" --start 2026-01-01 --end 2026-07-30
python3 scripts/reddapi.py trends --start 2026-07-01 --end 2026-07-30 --limit 10
python3 scripts/reddapi.py subreddits --search programming --limit 100
python3 scripts/reddapi.py subreddit programming

Search commands print one line per post (score, subreddit, upvotes, comments, date, title, URL). Add --raw for the full JSON. Exit codes: 0 ok, 1 API or network error, 2 missing key.

Full endpoint parameters, response schemas, and status codes live in references/api-reference.md.

Quick Reference

Which search mode, because the two are not interchangeable:

Default to semantic. Drop to vector only when you need a date range. Both cover the same archive and fill limit exactly, so the date filter is the only thing vector gives you that semantic does not.

Query patterns worth reusing:

Procedure

1. Scope with one broad semantic query. If the archive has no coverage for the topic, that shows up in the first call, at full limit.
2. Phrase the query as a person would. Full sentences with emotion words pull stronger opinions than noun phrases.
3. Widen with more queries, not a bigger limit. limit caps at 100 and is clamped silently above that. Three angles at 100 beat one at 300.
4. Switch to vector search when a date window matters. It is the only mode that accepts one, and the only reason to leave semantic search. Use the window to compare two periods rather than to trim one result set.
5. Check momentum separately. trends is global, not filterable by topic, so use it to spot what Reddit is talking about, not to score a specific idea. Topics are named entities; growth_rate compares the window with the equal-length one before it (null = new). It is not a leading indicator of Google search interest.
6. Follow high-engagement hits back to Reddit with web_extract on the returned url when the comment thread matters.
7. Report counts and quotes, not impressions. "9 of 40 sampled posts mention X, here are 3 URLs" is a finding; "users generally feel X" is not.