# Community Survey > Surveys informal and industry sources for a given topic — covering Hacker News, engineering blogs, ProductHunt, Medium, Substack, X (indirect), and Quora. Complements literature-survey (which targets academic papers) with community signal, practitioner discourse, and tooling trends. Use when the user wants a community survey, practitioner signal, tooling trends, or runs /community-survey . This is the one-shot variant; to track a topic's community signal over time (trajectory queries — what shifted, went quiet, or is new across runs) use community-survey-nlm instead. - Skill: `allyoushawn/community-survey` (Agent Skill) - Install (CLI): `npx skillmds@latest add allyoushawn/community-survey` - Raw SKILL.md: https://api.skillmd.com/api/skills/allyoushawn/community-survey/raw - Safety review: pending - Works with: Claude Code, Claude.ai, OpenAI Codex - Category: Research & Search - Author: allyoushawn (https://skillmd.com/u/allyoushawn) - Updated: 2026-09-17 - Page: https://skillmd.com/skills/allyoushawn/community-survey --- # Community Survey Skill Surveys informal and industry sources for a given topic — covering Hacker News, engineering blogs, ProductHunt, Medium, Substack, X (indirect), and Quora. Complements `literature-survey` (which targets academic papers) with community signal, practitioner discourse, and tooling trends. ## Inputs - **topic** (required): natural language topic to survey - **topic_slug** (optional): snake_case slug for file naming; derived from topic if omitted - **time_window** (optional): recency filter, default `"last 30 days"`. Pass `"last 7 days"`, `"last 3 months"`, etc. - **delta** (optional): if `true`, load the most recent prior survey for this slug and report only new signal - **lens** (optional): one-sentence framing for what angle this run cares about (e.g. "evaluating tools to adopt for production"). If not provided, falls back to the `## Lens` section in `/README.md`. The lens shapes the synthesis section (Step 8) — it is woven into the Key Themes, Notable Tools, and Key Debates summaries. ## Output location Resolve the paper reading repo path via the `fetch-repo-path` skill (reads `/path/to/works/for/you/knowledge_base/context/registry/repos.md` → "Paper Reading Repo" entry). Do not hardcode the path. Then write to: ``` /community-survey//community_survey_YYYYMMDD.md ``` If the `community-survey//` folder doesn't exist, create it. ## Per-topic folder layout Each topic gets its own folder under `community-survey/`. The canonical layout is: ``` /community-survey// ├── README.md ← persistent context for this topic (lens, audience, why tracked) ├── log.md ← append-only run journal ├── community_survey_YYYYMMDD.md ← per-run snapshot └── community_survey_YYYYMMDD.md ``` - `README.md` is written once on the first run for a topic and read on every subsequent run to recover the lens. - `log.md` is append-only (newest entry on top) and gives a quick chronological view of all runs for this topic. - `community_survey_YYYYMMDD.md` is the full per-run snapshot. ## Steps ### 1. Parse inputs - Derive `topic_slug`: lowercase, spaces → underscores, strip punctuation - Resolve today's date (`YYYYMMDD`) from `currentDate` - Set `time_window` default to `"last 30 days"` if not provided - If `delta=true`, read the most recent `community_survey_*.md` in the output folder and note its date as `prior_date` - If `lens` parameter not provided, read `/README.md` and extract the `## Lens` section content as the active lens for this run ### 1.5. Ensure README.md exists - If `/README.md` does not exist (first run on this topic): - Prompt the user for: - (a) why this topic is being tracked - (b) audience / who consumes the survey - (c) lens — one sentence describing the angle the survey should take (e.g. "evaluating tools to adopt", "tracking competitor moves", "mapping live debates") - Write the README.md with these three sections plus a `## Created` date line, using this template: ```markdown # Community Survey Topic — **Created:** YYYY-MM-DD ## Why tracked [user's answer to (a)] ## Audience [user's answer to (b)] ## Lens [user's one-sentence answer to (c) — this shapes synthesis framing] ``` - If `README.md` already exists: read it and extract the lens for use in Step 8 (synthesis) ### 2. Search Tier 1 — Hacker News Run two searches: ``` site:news.ycombinator.com site:news.ycombinator.com Show HN OR Ask HN ``` Fetch the top 2 HN threads using WebFetch. Extract: post title, score (if visible), key comment themes, and notable disagreements. ### 3. Search Tier 1 — Engineering Blogs Coverage is split into three category-grouped queries to avoid query-length limits and result dilution. #### 3a. Big Tech research blogs ``` site:research.google OR site:ai.googleblog.com OR site:deepmind.google OR site:research.facebook.com OR site:microsoft.com/en-us/research OR site:apple.com/research OR site:machinelearning.apple.com OR site:amazon.science OR site:openai.com/research OR site:anthropic.com/research ``` Fetch top 2 results. #### 3b. Big Tech engineering blogs (Western + Asian) ``` site:engineering.fb.com OR site:netflixtechblog.com OR site:eng.uber.com OR site:engineering.linkedin.com OR site:eng.snap.com OR site:research.bytedance.com OR site:engineering.atspotify.com OR site:doordash.engineering OR site:eng.lyft.com OR site:medium.com/airbnb-engineering OR site:medium.com/pinterest-engineering OR site:medium.com/twitter-engineering OR site:shopify.engineering OR site:stripe.com/blog/engineering ``` Fetch top 2 results. ``` site:d2.naver.com OR site:tech.kakao.com OR site:engineering.linecorp.com OR site:medium.com/coupang-engineering ``` Fetch top 1 result. #### 3c. ML/AI specialized blogs ``` site:huggingface.co/blog OR site:wandb.ai/fully-connected ``` Fetch top 1 result. For each fetched result across 3a–3c, summarize: which company, what they published, key technical claims. ### 4. Search Tier 1 — ProductHunt ``` site:producthunt.com ``` Extract: top-launched products, upvote signals, taglines, and any notable discussion in comments. ### 5. Search Tier 1 — Medium & Substack ``` site:medium.com OR site:substack.com ``` Fetch top 2 articles. Extract: author's thesis, key takeaways, community reaction if visible. ### 6. Search Tier 2 — X / Twitter (indirect) Run general search to surface X posts and secondary coverage: ``` twitter OR "x.com" discussion ``` Also run: ``` site:x.com ``` Do NOT attempt to fetch x.com URLs directly — they will fail. Extract tweet summaries and quote snippets from search result previews and secondary coverage articles only. ### 7. Search Tier 2 — Quora ``` site:quora.com ``` Surface top question URLs. Fetch the top 1 result. Extract: question framing, top answer summary. ### 8. Synthesize Produce a structured synthesis across all sources. All four synthesis subsections (Key Themes, Notable Tools & Projects, Key Debates & Disagreements, Emerging Patterns) must be written through the lens stated in README.md / passed via the `lens` parameter. Do not produce generic summaries — concentrate on signal that matters to the lens. ```markdown # Community Survey: **Date:** YYYY-MM-DD **Time window:** **Mode:** full | delta (since YYYY-MM-DD) **Lens:** ## Source Snapshots ### Hacker News [findings] ### Big Tech Research Blogs [findings] ### Big Tech Engineering Blogs [findings] ### ML/AI Specialized Blogs [findings] ### ProductHunt [findings] ### Medium / Substack [findings] ### X / Twitter (indirect) [findings — note these are snippets from search previews, not direct fetches] ### Quora [findings] ## Synthesis ### Key Themes ### Notable Tools & Projects ### Key Debates & Disagreements ### Emerging Patterns ### Open Questions ## Limitations This Run - Reddit: blocked at crawler level (Anthropic user-agent denied). Not included. - X/Twitter: direct fetch unavailable; coverage is indirect via search snippets and secondary articles. - Time window is approximate — search engine indexing lag may affect recency. ``` ### 9. Delta section (if delta=true) Append a `## What's New Since ` section comparing to the prior survey. Focus on: - New tools or projects not mentioned before - Shifted sentiment or consensus - New debates that emerged - Topics that went quiet ### 10. Save output Write the file to: ``` /community-survey//community_survey_YYYYMMDD.md ``` (`` was already resolved at the start of the run via `fetch-repo-path`.) Report the saved path to the user. ### 11. Append to log.md - If `/log.md` does not exist, create it with header `# Log — \n` - Prepend (newest on top) a new dated entry below the header: ```markdown ## YYYY-MM-DD — community-survey run () - Lens: - Time window: - Sources scanned: HN(N), eng-blogs(N), PH(N), Medium(N), X(snippets), Quora(N) - Output: community_survey_YYYYMMDD.md - Notable: ``` ## Source Tier Reference | Tier | Platform | Access | Notes | |------|----------|--------|-------| | 1 | Hacker News | Full | `site:` search + WebFetch threads | | 1 | Research Blogs | Full | Google Research, Google AI, DeepMind, Meta Research (FAIR), Microsoft Research, Apple Research, Apple ML, Amazon Science, OpenAI Research, Anthropic Research | | 1 | Engineering Blogs | Full | Meta Eng, Netflix, Uber, LinkedIn, Snap, ByteDance, Spotify, DoorDash, Lyft, Airbnb, Pinterest, Twitter, Shopify, Stripe, Naver D2, Kakao, LINE, Coupang | | 1 | ML-Specialized | Full | Hugging Face Blog, Weights & Biases (Fully Connected) | | 1 | ProductHunt | Full | Products + community ask threads | | 1 | Medium / Substack | Full | General search + WebFetch | | 2 | X / Twitter | Indirect | Search snippets + secondary coverage only | | 2 | Quora | Partial | URLs accessible; answer depth varies | | ❌ | Reddit | Blocked | Anthropic crawler denied; revisit if Reddit API credentials added | ## Known Limitations - **Reddit** not included. Future: add OAuth credentials (`REDDIT_CLIENT_ID`, `REDDIT_CLIENT_SECRET`) as env vars to unlock via API. - **X/Twitter** direct access not available. Future: add X Bearer Token (`X_BEARER_TOKEN`) for API v2 search (Basic tier, ~$100/mo). - Engineering blog coverage depends on search indexing; very recent posts (< 48h) may not appear.