Reddit Thread and Comment Retrieval
Retrieve Reddit threads and comments with source links, access diagnostics, and research-ready quotes.
Before & after
Same prompt, same agent — the only difference is the skill.
You could browse Reddit manually and look for discussions related to your product category. There are subreddits dedicated to different topics, and you might find relevant conversations there. You'd need to spend time searching and reading through threads to understand what people are saying. This gives you real unfiltered feedback from actual users. It's pretty manual though. Some of the data might be old or not super relevant to your specific product. You could pick out interesting quotes to use in your marketing.
REDDIT RESEARCH RESULTS QUERY: Product category research for project management tools Subreddits searched: r/productivity, r/webdev, r/startups, r/EntrepreneurRidge Time frame: last 90 days Discussions found: 47 relevant threads MAJOR THEMES (ranked by frequency) 1. PAIN POINT: Notification overload (24 mentions) Example comment: "I turned off all Slack notifications because I was losing 4 hours/day to interruptions. Now I check once an hour manually." Implication: Feature opportunity - smart notification batching 2. FRUSTRATION: Learning curve / setup friction (18 mentions) Example: "Spent 6 hours configuring the tool, still not happy with workflow" Implication: Onboarding is make-or-break, not a nice-to-have 3. DECISION FACTOR: "Does it work offline?" (12 mentions) Example: "Lost all data when internet cut out. Switched tools immediately." Implication: Emphasize offline-first architecture in positioning 4. COMPLAINT: Mobile app feels like afterthought (8 mentions) Example: "Desktop version solid. Mobile forces me to use desktop for important tasks." Implication: Mobile parity matters for adoption 5. POSITIVE: Integration ecosystem (14 approving comments) Example: "Best tool we found because it connects to Jira and Slack natively" Implication: Highlight integrations prominently in marketing LANGUAGE & PHRASING (direct from Reddit) • Users say "simple" not "elegant" or "intuitive" • They value "reliable" and "predictable" over "powerful" • Common complaint structure: "Task X should take 2 clicks, takes 7" COMPETITOR MENTIONS Tool A: praised for speed, criticized for limited integrations Tool B: popular in r/webdev, criticized for pricing model SURPRISES • Enterprise teams active on r/startups (not expecting this) • Solo founders avoid tools altogether (solving manually instead) • Teams testing 2-3 products in parallel (decision time: 4-6 weeks) Raw thread links + full quotes available in accompanying dataset file
About this skill
Reddit returns a block page, your agent reports an empty thread, or a search snippet gets passed off as a real discussion. This skill retrieves usable thread and comment evidence through an available Gemini CLI session or a direct request, then explains exactly what was accessible and what remains missing.
What it does
- Tries the Gemini CLI through tmux when available, then uses a bounded direct-request fallback.
- Distinguishes access blocks, login walls, deleted content, incomplete comment trees, and genuine empty results.
- Extracts post text, comment IDs, parent relationships, timestamps, and source links.
- Preserves short user quotations and enough surrounding context to interpret them accurately.
- Separates retrieved evidence from search snippets and model-generated summaries.
- Produces a compact evidence set for audience language, product complaints, or competitor research.
What you get
A source-linked thread and comment extract, an access and coverage report, and an optional synthesis tied to the retrieved sample. When access fails, you get the actual failure and a concrete next retrieval option.
Best for
Marketers, product researchers, and builders who need authentic Reddit discussions and defensible quotations for downstream research.
SKILL.md preview
---
name: reddit-thread-and-comment-retrieval
description: Retrieves Reddit posts and comments using an available Gemini CLI session through tmux, with a bounded curl fallback, then validates source text, comment coverage, and quotation provenance. When no retrieval tool is actually available, says so plainly and delivers a manual collection and verification path. Use when the user says "fetch this Reddit thread", "Reddit keeps blocking my agent", "pull the comments from these links", "find how users describe this problem", "get Reddit complaints about this product", "my Reddit fetch returns an empty page", or "verify these Reddit quotes".
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# Reddit Thread and Comment Retrieval
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