read-reddit-thread

name	read-reddit-thread
description	Fetch a Reddit post or comment thread from a URL using Reddit's public JSON API (no authentication needed). Returns the post and full comment chain for context. Use when you have a reddit.com URL and need the thread context.

read-reddit-thread

Purpose

Fetch a Reddit post or comment and its surrounding thread context using Reddit's public JSON API. No API key required.

Inputs

• A reddit.com or old.reddit.com URL (post or comment)

Workflow

1. Clean the URL: strip query params, remove trailing slashes, normalize old.reddit.com → reddit.com.
2. Append .json to the URL and fetch with a User-Agent header (Reddit blocks requests without one — use Buzz/1.0).
3. Parse the response:
   • Post URL (/r/sub/comments/id/slug): Returns [listing, comments]. The first listing contains the post, the second contains the comment tree.
   • Comment URL (/r/sub/comments/id/slug/comment_id): Same structure, but the comment tree is focused on the linked comment and its ancestors.
4. Extract the post: data.children[0].data from the first listing. Pull title, selftext, author, score, num_comments, created_utc, subreddit_name_prefixed.
5. Walk the comment tree from the second listing. For each comment, extract author, body, score, created_utc. Recurse into to get the full nested thread. Flatten into a list preserving depth (indent or number by depth level).