Reddit engagement

Find real Reddit threads where your product genuinely helps, and draft honest replies in a chosen voice. metalworks drafts only — you review and post; nothing is auto-posted.

This is metalworks’ execution arm — the one channel it can OPERATE, not just plan. It is re-homed under the Distribution pillar as the community-native + GEO participation stream: the Distribution GEO stream produces which threads to engage (participation_targets), and mw.distribution_engage(research, target) / /distribution-engage drafts a disclosed reply for a report-selected target. The standalone flow on this page (/draft-reply, mw.generate(...)) is the report-free entry — draft a reply for any thread URL. Both share the same compliance gate and the same voice stylebook.

A few terms used in the code below:

A persona (Persona) is a real person whose voice a reply is written in — a voice rubric plus a true background. It matters because replies should sound like an actual human with relevant experience, not a brand. A PersonaSet is just the named collection you pick from.
A DiscoveryContext is what you inject into a run — your voice guidelines plus that persona set — so every draft follows your rules.
The compliance check is an automatic check that catches fake or off-topic drafts before you ever see them (detailed below).

/find-threads log aggregation on a budget
/draft-reply

from metalworks import Metalworks
from metalworks.contract import DiscoveryContext, Persona, PersonaSet

mw = Metalworks()

context = DiscoveryContext(
    voice_guidelines=["Be specific. Name real tools. No marketing voice."],
    personas=PersonaSet(personas={
        "expert": Persona(voice_rubric="terse senior engineer", background="ran ops for 8 years"),
    }),
)

opps = mw.discovery.run(
    queries=["log aggregation on a budget", "elk alternatives"],
    subreddits=["sysadmin", "devops"],
    context=context,
)
for o in opps:
    print(o.post.url, "→", o.draft_reply[:120], "| passed compliance:", o.compliance.pass_)

discovery.run searches your queries, filters each candidate for relevance, drafts a reply in the matching persona’s voice, runs it through a compliance check, and returns Opportunity objects. Nothing is posted — you get gated drafts to review.

What you give it / what you get back

You give it: your search queries, the subreddits to search, and a DiscoveryContext — your voice guidelines and the personas replies should be written in. You get back: a list of Opportunity objects, each with the live post, a drafted reply, and the compliance verdict (pass_, violations, confidence). You read every one and decide what, if anything, to post.

Read public Reddit (zero keys)

The Reddit reader needs only the [reddit] extra — no API key, no OAuth:

posts    = mw.reddit.search("budget log aggregation", subreddit="sysadmin")
intel    = mw.reddit.subreddit("sysadmin")     # description, subscribers, rules, top posts
rules    = mw.reddit.rules("sysadmin")
comments = mw.reddit.comments(posts[0].url)

The Reddit client and its rate limiter are shared across calls, so a loop of searches stays within Reddit’s limits.

The compliance check

The compliance check is an automatic check that catches fake or off-topic drafts before you ever see them. It is a standalone, deterministic function — usable with no Reddit, no posting, no model:

from metalworks.reddit import heuristic_check

verdict = heuristic_check("This is a genuinely helpful, specific reply.")
verdict.pass_, verdict.violations, verdict.confidence

Below a confidence threshold, it escalates to an LLM judge (metalworks.discovery.llm_judge). This check is what guarantees nothing inauthentic gets drafted: the posting tools refuse on a block verdict regardless of what a model asked for.

Posting (you approve, every time)

result = mw.reddit.post(post_url, draft_text, username="my_account")

Posting requires REDDIT_CLIENT_ID / REDDIT_CLIENT_SECRET and a connected account (metalworks reddit auth login). Every attempt — sent or blocked — is appended to ~/.metalworks/post-log.jsonl. A draft that fails the compliance check is refused before it ever reaches Reddit.

Authentic, disclosed engagement only. The usage policy prohibits fake personas, invented backstories, and coordinated inauthentic behavior.

When the run is long

A full discovery run can take minutes (comment hydration is rate-limited at ~1.5 req/s), so for agent and MCP use it runs as a start → poll → result job instead of one blocking call:

discovery_start(...)   → { run_id }
discovery_status(run_id) → { state: "running" | "done" | "error" }
discovery_result(run_id) → { opportunities }

The Python mw.discovery.run(...) call is synchronous and blocks; use the job tools when a host model’s tool-call timeout is in play. The CLI mirrors this with metalworks discovery run. To wire the filter, generation, and gate together as your own building blocks, see Build your own agents.

Next: plan where it gets distributed — distribution and GEO / LLM-citability — from the same report. Or read why you can trust the output.

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Distribution

How it works

What you give it / what you get back

Read public Reddit (zero keys)

The compliance check

Posting (you approve, every time)

When the run is long

​What you give it / what you get back

​Read public Reddit (zero keys)

​The compliance check

​Posting (you approve, every time)

​When the run is long

What you give it / what you get back

Read public Reddit (zero keys)

The compliance check

Posting (you approve, every time)

When the run is long