We Built a Reddit Lead-Finder Skill for Claude

We shipped a packaged skill — reddit-lead-finder— that turns the ThreadSnoop API into a finished workflow instead of seven endpoints someone has to wire together themselves: give it a product (a URL is enough, it'll read the site and confirm what it found with you), and it searches the right subreddits, judges every candidate on fit, severity, and intent, checks each subreddit's self-promotion rules, and hands back a short ranked report with quoted evidence and links. Free, downloads from the ThreadSnoop homepage: a native Claude Skill for Claude Code and Claude Desktop — the two we've confirmed working end to end.

Why a skill instead of just docs?

An API is a set of capabilities; a skill is a finished way to use them. We'd already written the workflow up as a blog post — a prompt sketch you copy, tweak, and re-run by hand every time. A skill is that same workflow packaged so an agent picks it up on its own: Claude Code loads a real SKILL.md automatically when it's relevant, no slash command or re-explaining required, and any other agent gets the identical instructions as plain markdown to paste in once. Same judgment, same rubric, zero re-explaining per session.

What it actually does

1. Reads the product from a URL, or asks. Give it a site and it fetches the page itself, infers what the product is, who it's for, and what problem it solves — then says that back to you and asks you to confirm or correct it before spending a single search. No URL, no problem — it just asks directly.
2. Searches by problem, not by product category. search_subreddits finds communities from the pain, not the obvious industry name, and every sweep generates both category vocabulary (how a seller would describe it) and pain vocabulary (how someone with the problem actually complains about it, product-name-free) — the second is where most real leads live.
3. Judges every candidate on three dimensions— the same rubric ThreadSnoop itself scores on: Customer Fit, Problem Severity, Purchase Intent. A post that merely mentions a topic doesn't make the report; one that shows real fit and real urgency does.
4. Checks the subreddit's rules first. get_subreddit_rules before recommending anyone engage — plenty of communities ban self-promotion outright.
5. Drafts a short report, not a data dump — permalink, the quoted line that convinced it, the three scores, one sentence of reasoning, ranked.

A real run, unscripted

We tested the skill against ThreadSnoop's own product — a Reddit read API built for AI agents — searching r/webscraping for people running into exactly the kind of problem the API solves. One hit, the kind the skill is built to surface:

“How to search multiple Reddit Communities at once? What is the best way to limit search on selected Reddit Communities at once?”
— r/webscraping

The top reply pointed at Reddit's own unauthenticated multi-sub .json endpoint, then immediately noted it “fails to work unless you're logged in” — a real developer hitting a real gap a stable, authenticated read API closes directly. Judged against the rubric: strong Customer Fit (a developer trying to do exactly what the API is for), moderate Problem Severity (a real blocker, not yet an expensive one), and low explicit Purchase Intent (they asked how to build it themselves, not what to buy) — a genuine, on-topic thread worth a helpful reply, not a five-alarm lead. That distinction — real signal without inflating it — is the whole point of scoring instead of just keyword-matching.

Get it

Both files are free downloads from the ThreadSnoop skills page, no signup required to grab them — you'll need a free API key to actually run the workflow (1,000 free Reddit searches on signup, no card):

Claude Code — one command:

npx skills add threadsnoop/reddit-skills --skill reddit-lead-finder -a claude-code -g

Drop -g to scope it to just one project instead. You'll see an install summary and a quick security review before anything is written. Prefer not to run a command at all? Download SKILL.md yourself and save it as ~/.claude/skills/reddit-lead-finder/SKILL.md — it needs its own folder, a loose file at the top level of skills/ won't be picked up. Claude loads it automatically when what you're doing matches its description.

Claude Desktop or claude.ai — a different mechanism from Claude Code, and the Skills upload step itself (Customize → Skills) works the same on web or Desktop. But connect the ThreadSnoop MCP server first — required, not optional on either surface: on Free/Pro/Max plans a Skill's code-execution sandbox can't reach api.threadsnoop.com on its own, only domains a Team/Enterprise admin has allowlisted — MCP routes around that. Both surfaces connect the same way now — Settings → Connectors → Add custom connector, a real OAuth flow, no config file or local process involved (Desktop: full walkthrough; web: full walkthrough). Then enable Settings → Capabilities → Code execution and File creation — skills won't run without them. Then download reddit-lead-finder.zip, go to Customize → Skills → upload it, and turn it on. Pasting the file into a Project's instructions doesn't register as a skill Claude can find — a Project and a Skill are unrelated features.

Claude Code, Claude Desktop, and Claude.ai web are all confirmed working end to end. ChatGPT and Codex support is coming back once those paths are verified the same way — no half-tested instructions in the meantime.

Either file's default path is plain REST — no setup beyond the key itself: fetch /openapi.json first for the exact endpoint shapes, then call the API directly:

curl "https://api.threadsnoop.com/v1/subreddits/search?q=saas" \
  -H "x-api-key: YOUR_KEY"

MCP is the alternative — required on Claude Desktop/claude.ai for the sandbox reason above, optional (and only worth setting up if it's already connected) everywhere else. Connect https://api.threadsnoop.com/mcp and the seven MCP tools replace raw REST calls — see what the Reddit MCP server is for setup across Claude Code and Claude Desktop.

Frequently asked questions