Reddit MCP

A Model Context Protocol server that lets AI assistants explore Reddit trends,
discover communities, and analyze what's hot — without authentication.

What it does • Getting Started • Tools • Trend Score • JQ Filters • Docker

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🎯 What can it do?

This MCP gives your AI assistant the ability to:

• Discover which subreddits are most relevant for any topic
• Find crossover communities that cover multiple topics at once
• Track what's trending right now across specific subreddits
• Search posts globally or within a community
• Spot rising content before it goes viral
• Analyze whether a topic is gaining or losing momentum over time

No API key. No OAuth. Just Reddit's public JSON endpoints.

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🚀 Getting started

1. Configure

Create a config.yaml:

server:
  name: "reddit-mcp"
  version: "0.1.0"
  transport:
    type: "stdio"

reddit:
  user_agent: "MCP-TrendBot/1.0 (by /u/yourusername)"

⚠️ Always set a proper user_agent. Reddit blocks requests with missing or generic user agents. Use your actual Reddit username.

HTTP transport (for production)

server:
  name: "reddit-mcp"
  version: "0.1.0"
  transport:
    type: "http"
    http:
      host: ":8080"

reddit:
  user_agent: "MCP-TrendBot/1.0 (by /u/yourusername)"

See docs/config-stdio.yaml and docs/config-http.yaml for full examples.

2. Build and run

go mod tidy
make build
./bin/reddit-mcp -config config.yaml

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🛠️ Available tools

Discovery

Tool	What it does
discover_communities	Find subreddits for a single topic, sorted by subscribers
get_crossover_communities	Find subreddits covering multiple topics at once, ranked by overlap
get_subreddit_info	Stats about a subreddit: subscribers, active users, description

Trending & Search

Tool	What it does
get_trending_posts	Posts from known subreddits, merged and sorted by trend score
get_topic_trends	Global Reddit search across multiple topics at once
get_subreddit_pulse	Current state of a single community (hot/new/top/rising)
search_posts	Search posts by keyword, globally or within a subreddit
get_rising_posts	Posts gaining momentum in r/all right now

Analysis

Tool	What it does
analyze_sentiment_trend	Compare topic momentum: last 24h vs last N days

All tools that return posts accept a jq_filter parameter. Always use it to avoid burning context.

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🔥 The trend score

Every post comes with a trend_score calculated as:

trend_score = velocity × (1 + engagement)
velocity    = score / age_hours
engagement  = num_comments / max(score, 1)

A post with 500 upvotes from 2 hours ago scores much higher than one with 2000 upvotes from 3 days ago. This gives a real signal of what's actually hot right now, not just what accumulated votes over time.

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🔍 JQ filters

All tools that return posts accept a jq_filter parameter. This is the key to keeping output compact and avoiding context blowup.

Always provide one. The tool descriptions include recommended filters.

Examples

# Compact list — title, score and link only
[.[] | {title, score, permalink}]

# Top 5 posts sorted by trend score
sort_by(-.trend_score) | .[0:5]

# Only high-scoring posts
[.[] | select(.score > 500)]

# For get_topic_trends — 3 posts per topic, minimal fields
[.[] | {topic, posts: [.posts[:3] | .[] | {title, score, trend_score, subreddit}]}]

If the filter is invalid, the tool falls back to full unfiltered output.

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🗺️ Recommended workflow

When exploring multiple topics (e.g. kubernetes, cloud, golang, AI):

Step 1 — Find the right communities:

get_crossover_communities(
  topics: ["kubernetes", "cloud", "golang", "AI"],
  limit_per_topic: 5
)

This gives you subreddits ranked by how many of your topics they cover.

Step 2 — Get trending posts from those communities:

get_trending_posts(
  subreddits: ["devops", "kubernetes", "golang", "MachineLearning"],
  time_range: "week",
  limit: 5,
  jq_filter: "[.[:20] | .[] | {title, subreddit, score, trend_score, permalink}]"
)

Two calls. Compact output. High-quality results from actual communities.

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🐳 Docker

docker build -t reddit-mcp .
docker run -v $(pwd)/config.yaml:/config/config.yaml reddit-mcp

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⚠️ Rate limits

Reddit allows ~60 requests/minute without authentication. If you're making many calls, add a small delay between them. The server doesn't implement automatic backoff — handle it at the application level if needed.

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🔧 Troubleshooting

429 Too Many Requests

You've hit Reddit's rate limit. Wait a minute and try again.

Empty results

The subreddit might be private, very small, or the query too specific. Use get_subreddit_info to validate a community before fetching posts from it.

jq filter error

Invalid jq syntax falls back to unfiltered output. Check the filter syntax if you're getting more data than expected.

Reddit returns HTML instead of JSON

Your user_agent is being blocked. Make sure it's set and follows the format AppName/Version (by /u/username).

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🤝 Contributing

For AI agents working on this codebase, see AGENTS.md.

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📄 License

Apache 2.0