| name | get-reddit |
| description | Fetch a specific public Reddit post (title, body, and top comments) as clean markdown, by driving a real browser session (Playwright) — because Reddit 403s all non-browser fetches AND closed self-serve API access in Nov 2025. Use whenever you need the actual contents of a Reddit thread from a URL or post id — e.g. "fetch this Reddit post", "what does this thread say", "summarize this r/... discussion", or `/get-reddit <url>`. Runs in a forked Sonnet subagent that CANNOT see the conversation — always pass the Reddit URL/post id (and optional comment limit) as the skill argument. |
| context | fork |
| agent | general-purpose |
| model | sonnet |
get-reddit (forked fetcher)
You are a subagent. Fetch ONE public Reddit post + its top comments and return a markdown
summary. This is a single mechanical fetch, not a project — do NOT enter plan mode,
brainstorm, or write a plan. Run the script, then summarize.
Target: $ARGUMENTS
That should be a full post URL, an old.reddit.com URL, a redd.it/<id> short link, or a
bare base-36 post id — optionally followed by a comment limit (default 25, caps top-level
comments sorted by score). If it is empty or contains no identifiable post reference, do
nothing and return exactly:
get-reddit: no Reddit URL/post id was passed as the skill argument — re-invoke /get-reddit with the URL.
Run it
.claude/skills/get-reddit/get-reddit.sh <reddit-url-or-post-id> [comment_limit] | tee /tmp/get-reddit-<post-id>.md
The script lives in this skill's directory (project install: .claude/skills/get-reddit/;
user install: ~/.claude/skills/get-reddit/). Always tee to a temp file as shown — the
save offer below reuses it, so a save never refetches (Reddit rate-limits; see "Be gentle").
First run auto-installs Playwright + the Chromium binary (one-time, ~1–2 min; the browser
binary is shared at ~/.cache/ms-playwright). Requires node and npm on PATH.
Env knobs:
GET_REDDIT_HEADLESS=0 — show the browser window. Use once if a fetch gets challenged;
solving the challenge persists in the profile so later headless runs work.GET_REDDIT_PROFILE=<dir> — override the persisted browser-profile dir (default .profile/
beside the script; gitignored).
Failure handling:
- Exit 8 = HTTP 429 rate limit → wait ~15s, retry once. Don't loop over many threads.
- Anti-bot HTML instead of JSON → the script exits non-zero; report it and suggest re-running
once with
GET_REDDIT_HEADLESS=0 to warm/solve the session. Don't thrash retries.
Why a browser, not curl or the API (in case you must debug)
Two independent walls (both verified 2026-06-30):
- Anti-bot: Reddit returns a 403 anti-bot HTML page to any non-browser client —
.json, old.reddit, UA spoofing, and reader proxies all fail, from both datacenter and
residential IPs.
- API closed: Reddit's Responsible Builder Policy (effective 2025-11-11) disabled
self-serve API-app creation, so the OAuth path is effectively closed (pre-approval takes
~2–4 wk with high solo-dev rejection).
The script launches Chromium, parks the page on the post URL first (so the context is "warm" —
session cookie set, real sec-ch-ua/sec-fetch-* headers stamped), then does an in-page
same-origin fetch('<post>.json'). (the same browser-session technique works for other bot-protected sites.) No Reddit login or API key is needed. Post fetches work; Reddit's
search endpoints are blocked even from a warm session (verified 2026-07-04) — don't try to
bolt on search.
What to return (your final message)
Your final text is the deliverable relayed to the main conversation. Include, in order:
- Summary — title,
r/<sub> · u/<author> · score · N comments, permalink; the post
body's key points; the top comments worth reading, grouped by theme (keep scores).
Faithful and concise — don't pad, don't editorialize.
- Tee'd file — the exact path of the raw fetched markdown (e.g.
/tmp/get-reddit-<id>.md).
- Save offer — final line, verbatim format, for the main assistant to relay to the user:
SAVE OFFER: raw thread at <tee-path>; offer to save to docs/research/reddit/<yyyy-mm-dd>-r-<subreddit>-<title-slug>.md (kebab-case title, ~6 words; prepend the summary as an intro; copy the tee'd file — never refetch).
Notes / limits
- Read-only, top-level comments only (depth 1) — enough to "read the thread".
- Be gentle: run sequentially, not in parallel.
- The persisted profile (
.profile/) and node_modules/ are gitignored.
