Reddit Demand Validator

Reddit Demand Validator is a lightweight Codex/agent skill for validating startup, product, feature, and content ideas against real Reddit conversations.

It helps answer:

• Do real users talk about this problem?
• Which communities contain the highest-signal evidence?
• What unmet pains, workarounds, and objections show up repeatedly?
• What are users' own words?
• Is the demand evidence strong, mixed, or weak?
• What business-model risks are separate from demand strength?

The skill is intentionally small: no CLI, no runtime, no API keys required for v1. It uses search-engine site:reddit.com discovery, Reddit thread .json reads when available, old.reddit.com fallback, evidence filtering, query logs, and a structured Chinese markdown memo.

What It Produces

Each run writes a memo to:

research/reddit-demand/<slug>-<YYYY-MM-DD>.md

The memo includes:

• One-line demand verdict
• strong / mixed / weak demand label
• Who has the pain
• 3-5 unmet pain points
• Current workarounds
• Existing solutions inventory
• Representative English quotes
• Dimension ratings, including population frequency and individual recurrence frequency
• Business-model notes
• Counter-signals
• Query convergence process
• Actual query log
• Crawl completeness notes
• Reddit-only bias warning

Install

Clone this repository into any workspace where you use Codex skills:

git clone https://github.com/SevenAILab/reddit-demand-validator.git

Then copy or keep the project-level skill folder:

.agents/skills/reddit-demand-validator/

If your project already has an .agents/skills/ directory, copy only this folder into it:

cp -R reddit-demand-validator/.agents/skills/reddit-demand-validator /path/to/your-project/.agents/skills/

Restart or reload your Codex/agent session so the new skill metadata is discovered.

Usage

Ask Codex something like:

Use reddit-demand-validator to validate whether there is real Reddit demand for an AI fitness coach.

Or in Chinese:

用 Reddit Demand Validator 帮我调研 AI 健身私教在 Reddit 上有没有真实需求，核心未满足痛点是什么。

The skill will:

1. Convert the idea into search terms for tasks, outcomes, pains, current tools, and categories.
2. Run broad site:reddit.com discovery queries.
3. Extract concrete blockers from first-pass results.
4. Run constraint-led follow-up searches.
5. Select 8-12 high-signal threads.
6. Read each thread through .json, then old.reddit.com, then snippet fallback.
7. Deduplicate crossposts and near-duplicates.
8. Classify evidence as primary evidence, weak evidence, or excluded.
9. Produce a markdown research memo.

How The Scoring Works

The skill separates demand strength from business-model attractiveness.

Demand strength asks:

• Is the pain repeated across independent communities?
• Are there enough deduplicated effective threads?
• Is there meaningful workaround cost?
• Are users seeking alternatives or showing willingness to pay/switch?
• Is the evidence quality at least medium?

Business-model context is reported separately:

• Population frequency: how many independent users/communities show the pain
• Individual recurrence frequency: how often the same user faces the pain again
• Pricing and acquisition risks
• Whether the problem looks subscription-friendly, one-time, service-led, or lead-gen oriented

This avoids marking a real but episodic need as weak just because it may not be a good SaaS.

Evidence Rules

The skill uses three evidence buckets:

• primary evidence: usable for conclusions
• weak evidence: can reinforce a pattern but cannot be sole support
• excluded: not counted or cited as support

Examples of weak evidence:

• Snippet-only threads
• Founder/builder chatter
• Low-context "solve this for me" posts
• Suspiciously promotional or shallow threads

Examples of excluded evidence:

• Obvious self-promotion
• Giveaway or lead-gen posts
• Deleted/unreadable content
• Duplicate reposts with no new information
• Clear bot/automated posts

Files

.agents/skills/reddit-demand-validator/
  SKILL.md
  query-templates.md
  report-template.md
  scoring-rubric.md

Notes

• This skill researches Reddit only. It should not be treated as full market research.
• Reddit samples may overrepresent English-speaking, Western, technical, male, or highly online audiences.
• Reddit .json and old.reddit.com access can be unstable. The skill includes fallback behavior and requires the report to disclose crawl completeness.
• This is not a Reddit API client and does not require OAuth in v1.

License

MIT