8TrafficAI Writing in a subreddit's register
A post can be on-topic, correctly flaired, rule-compliant, and still get downvoted for how it reads. That happened to this project: a well-targeted announcement drew "Even your title reeks of the AI sentence construction" and settled at score 0. Targeting was fine. Register was wrong.
Existing tone skills derive a voice from your brand — a questionnaire, a guidelines file. This derives it from the community's own top posts, because that's the thing you actually have to match.
node scripts/rdtx.mjs voice ai_agents --sample 20 --sort top --time month
Verify the installed runtime without Reddit
Run node scripts/verify-synthetic.mjs with no arguments. It sends fabricated posts and comments
through the production aggregation contract, confirms that post and comment registers remain
separate, and proves the verifier does not emit its source-text canary. It makes no Reddit request.
A pass proves aggregate behavior only; it does not evaluate a live community or the quality of a
draft written from real samples.
Overall passed is the AND of all five shared checks; inspect functional.reddit_voice for this
skill's evidence.
An independent tester can submit the exact named verifier result through the
structured installed-run report.
Select the reddit-voice zero-input synthetic option only after running the installed copy. This
proves installation and aggregate-register contracts, not live community fit or writing quality.
Live sampling requires Node.js 18+, agent-browser, and the user's own logged-in Chrome profile;
see references/browser-session.md. The synthetic verifier needs only Node.js 18+.
What comes back, and why each number matters
| signal | what it tells you |
|---|---|
self_post_pct |
Check this first. Some subreddits are almost entirely link posts; a text post there is wrong on format before anyone reads a word. |
pct_first_person |
Whether the community writes "I built" or describes things impersonally |
pct_headers / pct_bullets / pct_bold |
The strongest AI tell. Heavy markdown structure in a subreddit that writes plain prose reads as machine output. |
median_chars (title, body, comment) |
Length expectations, which differ far more between subreddits than people assume |
distinctive_words / recurring_phrases |
Shared vocabulary and running references — the closest programmatic proxy for in-jokes |
samples |
The actual titles, openings, and top comments. These matter more than the statistics. |
Three real profiles, measured the same day
r/ai_agents 60% first-person 5% headers 0% bullets body ~1400ch
titles are opinions: "Trucking's gonna be fully automated in like
2-3 years. I'm not even joking."
r/cli 0% SELF-POSTS titles ~53ch, 55% use a colon or dash
showcase culture: "Made a terminal-style text-only social network
like it's 1987 :)" — the artifact is the post
r/SideProject 80% first-person 50% headers 50% bullets body ~1400ch
personal-story framing: "I built a speed/distance tracker for my
hamster wheel"
Same topic, three incompatible formats. Structure that reads as effort in r/SideProject reads as AI slop in r/ai_agents, and neither belongs in r/cli, where you post the thing itself.
How to use the output
Read the samples, then write. Do not compute an average and imitate it — that produces a different flavour of synthetic. Specifically:
- Match the format before the words. Self-post vs link post, and the formatting percentages. Getting this wrong is unrecoverable.
- Steal the opening move, not the sentences. Notice how top posts start — a claim, a result, a complaint — and open the same way with your own material.
- Write at their length. A 1400-character community will not read your 4000-character post.
- Use their nouns.
distinctive_wordsis the vocabulary the community actually uses; borrowed jargon from elsewhere marks you as an outsider. - Lead with the finding, not the tool. In every sample set, the top posts share something useful on its own terms. A post whose payload is "I made a thing" ranks below one whose payload is "here's what I learned", even when they describe the same work.
Tells to strip
These correlate with the downvoted-as-AI reaction and are worth removing on sight:
- Bold-headed sections in a subreddit that writes prose
- Tricolon everywhere — "faster, cleaner, and more reliable"
- "It's not X, it's Y" and "Here's the thing:" constructions
- Em-dash-heavy sentences stacking three clauses
- A tidy summary paragraph that restates what was just said
- Hedged conclusions where the community states opinions flatly
Honest scope
This helps you write appropriately for a community — the same thing a person does when they read a room before speaking. It does not make promotional content welcome where promotion isn't welcome, and it will not rescue a post with nothing to say. If the sampled community rewards genuine findings and you have none, the register fix won't help; get a finding first.
Pair with reddit-scout (where you may post) and reddit-post (writing and verifying it).
Related
reddit-scout— rank subreddits and check whether promotion is allowedreddit-post— post, with visibility verificationreddit-seo— confirm the post is indexable