social-reddit
SkillDraft and revise Reddit posts, comments, AMAs, and product launches in the author's documented voice. Use when preparing content for a subreddit: check community rules, choose a native format, ground claims in supplied proof, disclose affiliations and AI use, and plan useful replies and outcome measurement.
Instructions
Overview
Write a useful contribution for a particular community in a particular person's voice. Apply supplied facts and proof first, the author's documented voice next, and platform register as the fallback; community rules remain a publication gate. Use content-voice for general editing and this skill for Reddit decisions.
Mental model
Separate visibility from permission and qualified interest. Downvotes reduce visibility; moderators enforce community rules alongside sitewide defenses (official, Reddit Safety, 2026-07). Don't use archived Hot or Best formulas, fixed ranking weights, or comment-entry cutoffs to predict distribution.
The Home-feed X experiment hides an item and signals less similar content for a limited global subset (official, Reddit Changelog, 2026-08). Keep each angle relevant; a personalized Home sample isn't a community-wide leaderboard (directional).
Treat editorial advice marked (directional) as craft judgment, never a detection bypass or performance promise.
Community and format decisions
Before drafting, read the target's current rules, sidebar, pinned threads, and recent comparable posts. Record rule URLs and access date, allowed format/flair, promotional placement, eligibility, AI restrictions, audience register, and recurring objections. If rules are inaccessible, mark clearance unknown and withhold the publication recommendation.
Use modern community pages and their rules links. Community rules JSON was verified for r/rust and r/mcp but isn't a guaranteed logged-out interface (official, Community Rules, checked 2026-09). Old Reddit requires login during the announced transition; new public API requests are being restricted gradually (official, Reddit Infrastructure, 2026-08).
Promotion isn't inherently spam. Some communities prohibit it; others set their own promotional share guideline (official, Reddit Spam Guidance, 2026-03). Resolve local requirements; there is no universal quota.
Build a roster by angle, verifying permission separately for every actual subreddit (directional):
| Audience situation | Candidate venue | Contribution and clearance question |
|---|---|---|
| Practitioner evaluating a workflow | Relevant specialist community | Reproducible artifact; check source and promotion rules |
| Buyer comparing alternatives | Existing question in the buyer's niche | Answer the stated constraints; disclose your stake |
| Maker showing a finished object | Relevant showcase community or designated thread | Show the object and a real limitation; check media/flair |
| Local customer planning a job | Relevant city or trade community | Explain local scope; check commercial-post placement |
| Existing users needing support | Product's owned community | Answer unresolved problems and publish useful documentation |
Take qualitative length bands from surrounding posts, not a platform-wide word target (directional):
| Community/task | Format | Post length band and anatomy | Comment length band |
|---|---|---|---|
| Expertise or technical discussion | Text; link if the source is the subject | Developed explanation with evidence and conditions | Developed answer if needed to evaluate evidence |
| Showcase or craft | Image/gallery or demo video where enabled | Compact caption explaining the artifact | Brief observation or compact process answer |
| Help or buying question | Text or existing question thread | Compact account of attempts and unresolved constraints | Compact answer; expand for a necessary procedure |
| Experience or local service story | Text with permissioned evidence | Developed account of the decision and consequences | Compact response to the particular experience |
| Casual chat | Text or enabled media reply | Brief observation | Brief conversational reply |
| Existing relevant submission | Repost, formerly crosspost | Short destination-specific context | Match the destination's discussion depth |
Private replies and bios: reference/examples.md (directional).
Reposts preserve the original username, community, and score in the preview; destinations must allow reposting, and the original's success grants no permission (official, Reddit Reposting, 2026-07).
Title decisions (directional):
| Subject | Lead with | Remove |
|---|---|---|
| Result | Supported outcome and the condition that bounds it | Unsupported magnitude or causal certainty |
| Artifact | What readers can inspect | Brand slogan and empty launch excitement |
| Question | Exact unresolved problem | Vague help request or a rhetorical opener that obscures the question |
| Decision | Concrete choice and cost | Forced contrast or tidy life lesson |
Check the composer and local title rules. Front-load useful information without an unsupported character cap. Name the product when relevant and permitted, and identify ownership early in promotional content.
Launch and proof posts
For campaign work, record audience, buying situation, promise, sourced proof, desired action/destination, stage, disclosures, and author role. Missing voice samples alone don't block a restrained factual draft. Omitting a CTA is a valid deliberate choice. Narrow unsupported claims or mark essential gaps in a nonpublishable working draft; never invent evidence.
Post shapes and qualitative length bands are craft choices (directional):
| Shape | Native anatomy | Length band |
|---|---|---|
| Launch day | Ownership, buying problem, inspectable result, limitation, permitted action | Compact announcement with supporting context |
| Demo/artifact | Visible task, actual input/output, operating conditions, access path | Brief caption; extend only to explain proof |
| Customer outcome | Permissioned result bounded by the proof checklist in reference/examples.md | Developed evidence account |
| Founder decision | Decision, rejected option, actual cost, current uncertainty | Compact operator account |
| Objection answer | Fair statement of objection, evidence relevant to it, unsuitable cases | Brief answer or developed technical explanation |
| Recap | What changed, what failed, unresolved question, source-specific outcomes | Developed retrospective without repeated launch copy |
Apply the strip-test: without the product mention, the post should still teach or show something useful. A permitted announcement can name its product openly; don't disguise a pitch as an unrelated question. Keep proof legible and meaningfully precise, redact private information, and obtain permission for customer quotes or screenshots (directional).
Links, identity, and seeding
Put a relevant destination in the root post where permitted, or in the designated promotional thread when required. In comments, link when it directly answers the question and local rules permit; don't hide a prohibited pitch in a reply or profile detour. Prefer a direct inspectable destination (directional). Repetitive promotion and unsolicited mass outreach violate spam policy (official, Reddit Spam, 2026-05).
Disclose ownership, employment, sponsorship, gifted products, or affiliate benefit beside the recommendation (directional). AI-generated or modified content must follow community rules and carry a tag or other disclosure; presenting generated content as human-generated is prohibited, and human review creates no exemption (official, Reddit Manipulated Content, 2026-05). Under the Responsible Builder Policy, new Data API access needs Reddit's approval since November 2025 (Devvit is the default route), bot content must disclose automation, bots don't DM without consent, and identical content isn't posted across subreddits (official, Reddit Responsible Builder Policy, 2025-11). Never conceal automation through voice edits.
Use a disclosed founder account for personal decisions and an identifiable brand account for official support (directional). Eligible Reddit Pro organizations can seek verification; individual verification remains an alpha test, and verification doesn't override community rules (official, Reddit Verified Profiles, 2026-07).
Participate where you have relevant contributions. Don't manufacture independent praise, coordinate votes, buy accounts, or seed repetitive employee comments; Reddit's defenses address spam and inauthentic voting (official, Reddit Safety, 2026-07). Employees disclose their roles and contribute only relevant expertise (directional). Product Hunt's sharing guide recommends existing community participation and prohibits upvote requests or rewards (official, Product Hunt Sharing, checked 2026-09).
For an owned subreddit, seed useful original discussion mixed with relevant reposts. Contact destination moderators before substantial outbound reposting, and don't increase it without a member-growth response (official, Reddit Community Seeding, 2026-05).
Launch-week rhythm
Plan T-7 to T+7 (T = launch day) around new evidence and local permission: research and moderator clearance first, technical and product/support reply owners assigned, first hours covered on launch day, then corrections and in-context objection answers, with a recap only if warranted. Never mass-message commenters. The illustrative offset table with reply plans and qualified-interest evidence is in reference/examples.md; its offsets aren't measured timing optima (directional).
Use Reddit Pro post views, upvote ratio, comments and shares, plus available comment views/replies and account reach/followers. Hourly post views cover the first 48 hours and remain available for 45 days (official, Reddit Pro Performance, 2026-04). Not every visible metric is in the CSV export. Reddit expanded free-award availability, so award changes alone don't establish stronger demand (official, Reddit Changelog, 2026-08).
Keep Reddit-native engagement separate from destination visits, activation, retention, and revenue, and record attribution uncertainty (directional).
Treat a single score reading as noise: scores move both ways within the first hour, and an early negative reading can recover fully. Judge a venue, format, or product mention only from a value that holds across two separated observations. Record product-mentioning contributions separately and compare them within the same community (operator observation, directional). Open reference/examples.md for a launch measurement package, commerce or paid follow-through, or adapting proof to a new niche.
AMAs
Arrange moderator pre-approval and the accepted proof method before announcing an AMA; share only necessary identity information in the proof photo or official identity link. Agree on topic boundaries, flair, start/end time with timezone, and answer ownership. State who is answering and disclose commercial interests (directional).
Answer substantive questions throughout the window, including difficult ones; acknowledge unknowns and return with verified answers. Mark the session closed and state any real follow-up commitment. Video comments work where moderators enable them in eligible public SFW communities and don't autoplay; pair video answers with useful text (official, Reddit Video Comments, 2026-06; text accompaniment: directional). Check media and upload constraints in the composer; don't invent duration limits.
Voice on this platform
Keep the author's natural register, calibrating depth and formality from surrounding comments without adopting hostility or slang the author doesn't use. Don't add typos, fake edits, dropped articles, or lowercase camouflage. reference/imperfections.md covers register, local idiom, and sensitive replies (register decisions, not error injection).
Read the parent comment as well as the submission. Identify whose question, constraint, or evidence the reply addresses; don't attribute a reply's claim to the original poster. Without firsthand experience, attribute the source instead of inventing an anecdote. Keep observed, reported, and inferred results distinct, and qualify the affected claim rather than hedging every sentence (directional).
Default to prose in comments, but keep lists, headings, and copyable code when they make the answer easier to use. A factual list needs as many items as the facts require; remove padding, not a count. Don't force a detailed troubleshooting answer into a one-liner (directional).
Match the composer: Reddit's Rich Text and Markdown editors are distinct, and neither is generic GitHub Markdown. Preview quotes, code, links, and line breaks rather than pasting raw markup into the wrong mode. Accompany a screenshot with the relevant error text or explanation, and preserve exact code/error strings (official, Reddit Formatting Guide, 2026-08; text-equivalent practice: directional).
Open reference/ai-tells.md during the editorial pass for the scoped pattern checklist and evidence limits. Its purpose is better communication; no punctuation choice or cleanup proves authorship or prevents accusations.
Cadence and engagement
Choose timing from recent target-community observations and author availability; no universal ET window or weekend exclusion is supported (directional).
| Thread situation | Response decision (directional) |
|---|---|
| Relevant unanswered problem | Add the missing answer, even in a quiet or older thread |
| Active conversation with room for expertise | Address a specific point; don't echo the leading reply |
| Your product conflicts with the reader's constraints | Say so and recommend a suitable route if known |
| Someone else's showcase or persistent pile-on | Don't hijack it; disengage if you can't contribute constructively |
| Evidence contradicts your earlier advice | Correct the claim openly and state the changed implication |
Reserve time for early replies and later follow-up. Admit ignorance; when someone acts on advice, help with the next real obstacle. Don't infer a ranking multiplier from reply activity (directional).
For an AI accusation, choose by substance rather than escalation order (directional):
| Trigger | Response |
|---|---|
| Factual error identified | Correct it and provide the source |
| Genuine authorship or automation question | State the actual assistance used and correct missing disclosure |
| Unsupported insult with no question | Leave it unanswered; don't debate detector scores |
| Second accusation in a short window, different communities | Read it as register, not one reader; pause new threads for a cycle, continue only warm conversations, post nothing further in the flagged threads |
| Rule violation or abusive exchange | Stop; resolve the moderation issue without evasive reposting |
Open reference/imperfections.md for worked response choices.
What gets suppressed
Check eligibility messages: communities can gate on account age, total/subreddit karma, verified email, and approved-contributor status; thresholds are hidden. Post Check uses an LLM to flag likely rule violations but doesn't itself block submission (official, Reddit Eligibility, 2026-08).
AutoModerator can enforce configured domain, keyword, pattern, and affiliate-link checks (official, Reddit AutoModerator, 2026-08). Rules Hub uses LLMs to interpret rule intent under moderator control and remains in rollout (official, Reddit Infrastructure, 2026-08). Follow the meaning of rules; don't claim ubiquitous AI-text classifiers or universal phrase penalties.
Repeated mass posting, rapid old-content reposting for karma, and continuously promotional bots are prohibited (official, Reddit Spam, 2026-05). If a post disappears, inspect its state and moderation messages; record the reason as unknown unless supplied, never diagnosed from a logged-out view or low score (directional).
A failed write can mean lost permission, even when the error doesn't say so. After two failures for the same destination, check the account's standing there and whether an earlier attempt already published (a response failure can still leave a duplicate) before retrying. When standing is lost, drop the destination and redistribute the work rather than appealing by reflex (operator observation, directional).
Examples
These fictional briefs and drafts illustrate craft, not real testimonials or publishable claims. For actual work, use the author's evidence and disclosure appropriate to the production process.
Developer tool: artifact post
Brief: a maintainer writes terse debugging notes; a saved trace shows a dry-run reporting error, and the fix is untested on remote storage.
Title: Our dry-run report skipped filenames containing tabs
I maintain the tool. The files were present in the scan, but our report parser dropped those rows. The attached trace shows the point where they disappeared. The patched report includes them on local storage; remote storage is still untested. Reproducer: [source link].
Why it works: ownership is visible, the artifact supports the claim, and the limitation follows the proof rule without an invented success story.
B2B SaaS: objection reply
Brief: an operations founder writes plain, candid replies; the product's pilot still required manual weekend refunds.
Keep your current refund workflow for now. I work on the product you're considering, and our pilot team still entered weekend refunds by hand. Your unattended-weekend requirement rules us out. The current limitation is documented at [source].
Why it works: it answers the buyer's situation without a pitch; the source and unsuitable case apply the comment decision table.
Consumer maker: proof caption
Brief: a bag maker writes tactile descriptions; ride photos show a repaired seam and persistent strap rubbing.
Title: The bag held at the seam, but the strap still rubs
This is the bag I sew for my shop. You can see the pale scuff beside the buckle in the close-up. The repaired seam held during the loaded ride; the strap rubbing hasn't improved. I'm leaving that photo in the listing so buyers can see where it wears.
Why it works: the caption ties visible wear to documented use; the bounded outcome follows the proof rule, and no CTA is needed.
Local service: experience post
Brief: a tailor writes practical job notes; the customer approved a pocket repair, kept the worn lining, and permitted the photos.
Title: Keeping the worn lining during a pocket repair
I run the alterations shop that did this repair. The pocket is usable again. The customer wanted to keep the lining, so the fraying you can see in the photo is still there; replacing it would be a separate job. Photos shared with permission.
Why it works: affiliation and job scope are explicit, and the remaining issue prevents a misleading before/after promise.
Checklist
For every draft:
- The reply addresses the right speaker and current context; quotes, paraphrases, and inferences remain distinguishable.
- Hook/first line states the subject; the contribution has a single main idea.
- Current rules, eligibility, format, and flair checked; unknown clearance blocks recommendation.
- Link and CTA path fit the venue; a deliberate no-CTA choice is recorded.
- Every specific has supplied provenance or a draft-only placeholder; incomplete drafts aren't publishable.
- Evidence, voice, and substance reviewed; useful structure preserved; no invented experience or mistakes; required affiliation and AI disclosures included.
For posts:
- Proof and strip-test checked; package includes title/body, caption, asset brief, alt text or image description where supported, and video transcript/captions as needed.
- Reply owner and availability recorded; follow-up and measurement plan fit the goal.
For comments:
- Read the reply chain; answer an unresolved point at suitable depth without hijacking it.
References
Dates identify supplied source updates; “checked” identifies undated sources reviewed for this edition.
- Reddit Safety, 2026-07-06.
- Reddit Changelog, 2026-08-12.
- Community Rules: r/rust, r/mcp, checked 2026-09.
- Reddit Infrastructure, 2026-08-05.
- Reddit Spam Guidance, 2026-03-28.
- Reddit Reposting, 2026-07-13.
- Reddit Spam, 2026-05-19.
- Reddit Formatting Guide, 2026-08-06; checked 2026-09-05.
- Reddit Manipulated Content, 2026-05-19.
- Reddit Responsible Builder Policy, announced 2025-11-11 in r/redditdev; page not fetchable, terms checked via the announcement 2026-10.
- Reddit Verified Profiles, 2026-07-09.
- Product Hunt Sharing, checked 2026-09.
- Reddit Community Seeding, 2026-05-28.
- Reddit Pro Performance, 2026-04-02.
- Reddit Video Comments, 2026-06-11.
- Reddit Eligibility, 2026-08-10.
- Reddit AutoModerator, 2026-08-28.
Re-validate when community rules or disclosure policy change; when feed, composer, API, moderation, or analytics features change; or when inspectable performance research appears.
Validated: 2026-10