reddit-archive

name

reddit-archive

description

Download and archive a Reddit post with everything attached to it — full text, the whole comment tree, images, galleries, and v.redd.it video with the audio actually merged back in. Use whenever someone wants to save, download, archive, back up, or scrape a Reddit post or thread; download a Reddit video or gallery; capture a thread before it is deleted; or build a dataset from Reddit content. Also use when a downloaded Reddit video has no sound, which is the usual symptom of taking `fallback_url` instead of merging the DASH streams, or when a gallery download returns 403. Produces a self-contained directory with a manifest, so the capture is reproducible and auditable. Not for posting to Reddit.

Archiving a Reddit post with its media

Reddit stores a post's media in four different shapes, and a naive download gets three of them wrong. This skill handles all four, verified against live posts of each type.

node scripts/rdtx.mjs archive <permalink> --out ./archive --comments 200

Verify the installed runtime without Reddit

Run node scripts/verify-synthetic.mjs with no arguments. It uses fabricated local fixtures to exercise production media planning—including galleries, video audio metadata, and crosspost-parent resolution—plus the shared runtime contracts. It makes no Reddit request or download and removes its temporary state. A pass proves installation and planning behavior only; it does not prove a live post can be fetched or that media bytes can be downloaded. Overall passed is the AND of all five shared checks; inspect functional.reddit_archive for this skill's evidence.

An independent tester can submit the exact named verifier result through the structured installed-run report. Select the reddit-archive zero-input synthetic option only after running the installed copy. This proves installation and media-planning contracts, not a live fetch or downloaded media bytes.

What you get

archive/aww_1varxvd/
├── post.json        raw API response, unmodified
├── post.md          readable: title, author, age in years, body, nested comments
├── comments.json    the full tree
├── media/           image.jpeg | gallery_01..NN.jpeg | video.mp4
└── manifest.json    files, sizes, sha256 prefixes, source URLs, media_kind

post.md reports the post's age in years, which is what you want when hunting for old threads. manifest.json makes the capture reproducible — it records where every byte came from.

The four media shapes, and the trap in each

type	where the URL lives	the trap
image	url (i.redd.it/…)	none — public, no cookies needed
gallery	media_metadata[id].s.u	the signed s= param must be passed whole; truncating it returns 403
video	secure_media.reddit_video	fallback_url is video-only — taking it silently gives you a clip with no sound
crosspost	crosspost_parent_list[0]	the crosspost itself carries no media; you must follow to the parent

The video case is the one that bites. Reddit serves v.redd.it as DASH with separate video and audio streams. archive runs yt-dlp against the permalink and lets ffmpeg merge them, producing a real h264 + aac file. Verified with ffprobe:

stream: video  (h264)
stream: audio  (aac)

yt-dlp also refuses Reddit without credentials ("Account authentication is required"), and reading Chrome's cookie database fails while Chrome holds it open. archive exports a Netscape cookies.txt from the live browser session instead, which works regardless of locks or keychain.

Requirements

• node ≥ 18 and agent-browser
• yt-dlp and ffmpeg — needed only for video; images and galleries work without them
• a logged-in Chrome session: rdtx launch → rdtx login → rdtx doctor

Options

flag	effect
--out <dir>	archive root (default ./archive)
--comments <n>	how many comments to fetch (default 200)
--no-media	metadata and text only

Verifying a capture

manifest.json records media_kind and a per-file result. A partial capture is visible rather than silent:

{ "media_kind": "gallery", "comments_captured": 41,
  "media": [{ "type": "gallery", "file": "media/gallery_01.jpeg", "bytes": 231460, "ok": true }],
  "crossposted_from": null }

If ok is false on any entry, that file did not download — the manifest tells you which and why instead of leaving a gap you discover later.

Scope and courtesy

This archives public posts through your own logged-in session, at human pace (a jittered wait between requests). It is not a bulk scraper and deliberately has no crawl mode: fetching whole subreddits is what gets IPs and accounts blocked, and Reddit's terms cover bulk collection. For large-scale historical data, use Reddit's own data API or an existing archive dump rather than driving a browser at it.

Related

• reddit-post — write posts and comments
• reddit-seo — check whether a post is indexable