Reddit Search and Post Retrieval via Scavio
Search Reddit posts or retrieve a full post with its threaded comment tree. Returns structured JSON with subreddit, author, score, flair, awards, and media fields.
When to trigger
Use this skill when the user asks to:
- Search Reddit for opinions, discussions, or community sentiment on a topic
- Fetch the full text and comments of a Reddit post by URL
- Research how developers or communities talk about a product, library, or issue
- Build RAG pipelines that need community-sourced context
- Monitor brand or competitor mentions across Reddit
Note: Reddit requests take 5-15 seconds. Set a client timeout of at least 30 seconds.
Setup
Get a free API key at https://scavio.dev (1,000 free credits/month, no card required):
export SCAVIO_API_KEY=sk_live_your_key
Workflow
- Finding discussions: call
/reddit/search with a keyword query. Use sort: top for the most upvoted posts or sort: new for freshest results.
- Reading a post: if the user provides a Reddit URL, call
/reddit/post to get the full body and comment tree.
- Pagination: pass
nextCursor from the search response back as cursor to get the next page. Stop when nextCursor is null.
- Comment tree: comments are returned flat in traversal order. Use
depth for indentation or parentId to reconstruct the tree. Top-level replies have parentId equal to the post id (t3_…); nested replies have parentId equal to a comment id (t1_…).
Endpoints
| Endpoint | Credits | Description |
|---|
POST https://api.scavio.dev/api/v1/reddit/search | 2 | Search Reddit posts by query, sort, and cursor |
POST https://api.scavio.dev/api/v1/reddit/post | 2 | Get a full post with threaded comments by URL |
Authorization: Bearer $SCAVIO_API_KEY
Search Parameters
| Parameter | Type | Default | Description |
|---|
query | string | required | Search query (1-500 chars) |
sort | string | relevance | relevance, hot, top, new, comments |
cursor | string | -- | Pagination token from previous response's nextCursor |
Post Detail Parameters
| Parameter | Type | Default | Description |
|---|
url | string | required | Full Reddit post URL |
Examples
import os, requests
BASE = "https://api.scavio.dev"
HEADERS = {"Authorization": f"Bearer {os.environ['SCAVIO_API_KEY']}"}
# Search Reddit
results = requests.post(f"{BASE}/api/v1/reddit/search", headers=HEADERS,
json={"query": "FastAPI vs Django 2026", "sort": "top"}).json()
posts = results["data"]["posts"]
next_cursor = results["data"]["nextCursor"] # pass as "cursor" for next page
# Fetch full post and comments
post_data = requests.post(f"{BASE}/api/v1/reddit/post", headers=HEADERS,
json={"url": "https://www.reddit.com/r/Python/comments/1smb9du/fastapi_vs_django/"}).json()
post = post_data["data"]["post"]
comments = post_data["data"]["comments"] # flat list, use depth/parentId for tree
Search Response
{
"data": {
"searchQuery": "FastAPI vs Django 2026",
"totalResults": 14,
"nextCursor": "eyJjYW5kaWRhdGVzX3JldH...",
"posts": [
{
"position": 0,
"id": "t3_1smb9du",
"title": "FastAPI vs Django in 2026 -- what the teams are actually using",
"url": "https://www.reddit.com/r/Python/comments/1smb9du/fastapi_vs_django/",
"subreddit": "Python",
"author": "python_dev",
"timestamp": "2026-04-15T16:34:40.389000+0000",
"nsfw": false
}
]
},
"credits_used": 2,
"credits_remaining": 498
}
Post Detail Response
{
"data": {
"post": {
"id": "t3_1smb9du",
"title": "FastAPI vs Django in 2026 -- what the teams are actually using",
"body": "After a year of running both in production...",
"url": "https://www.reddit.com/r/Python/comments/1smb9du/fastapi_vs_django/",
"contentUrl": "https://www.reddit.com/r/Python/comments/1smb9du/fastapi_vs_django/",
"subreddit": "Python",
"author": "python_dev",
"score": 842,
"upvoteRatio": 0.97,
"numComments": 214,
"timestamp": "2026-04-15T16:34:40.389000+0000",
"flair": "Discussion",
"nsfw": false,
"awards": []
},
"comments": [
{
"id": "t1_lxs9a0k",
"author": "senior_py",
"body": "We moved to FastAPI for the API surface and kept Django for admin...",
"score": 312,
"depth": 0,
"timestamp": "2026-04-15T17:02:11.000000+0000",
"parentId": "t3_1smb9du"
}
]
},
"credits_used": 2,
"credits_remaining": 496
}
url is the canonical Reddit permalink. contentUrl is the rendered URL — for link posts it will be the external article; for text/self posts it is the same as url; for image/video posts it is the media URL.
Guardrails
- Each Reddit call costs 2 credits (not 1). Inform the user if they are paginating many results.
- Never fabricate post titles, authors, scores, or comment content. Only return API data.
- Requests take 5-15 seconds. If the user's UX is time-sensitive, recommend async or streaming patterns.
- Do not filter out NSFW posts silently — surface the
nsfw flag so the user can decide.
- When summarizing comment threads, preserve the author attribution.
Failure handling
504 means Reddit timed out. Retry once with the same request.502 / 503 mean upstream is temporarily unavailable. Wait a few seconds before retrying.- If search returns no results, suggest different keywords or a different
sort value.
- If
SCAVIO_API_KEY is not set, prompt the user to export it before continuing.
LangChain
pip install scavio-langchain
from scavio_langchain import ScavioSearchTool
tool = ScavioSearchTool(engine="reddit")
