The Shelf / Growth / Reddit Growth System
Reddit Growth System
Grow on Reddit without getting banned. Recon the rules, earn standing, queue by hand.
The job: get your product in front of Reddit's communities without your account getting smelled, shadowbanned, or permabanned. The skill runs recon and drafting; you press submit.
Reddit is the highest-intent free channel most products have — people literally type "is there an app that does X?" into it every day. It's also the easiest place to torch an aged account in one afternoon. Every growth-hack thread tells you to "provide value first"; almost none tell you what that means mechanically. This skill does.
What it makes your agent do
- Recon before anything. Pull each target sub's actual rules via Reddit's read-only API (full endpoint reference included, free 2-minute OAuth setup) and classify it GREEN / YELLOW / RED — promo welcome, designated-thread only, or banned outright. It also extracts the silent gates that auto-remove newcomers: minimum karma, account age, required flair.
- Plan a genuine angle per product: the reason a redditor would thank you, not the pitch. Includes a starter map of maker subs and policy patterns across nine product categories.
- Enforce the warm-up. Two weeks of real, link-free participation before any promo. An account that has only ever promoted is transparent.
- Draft a paste-ready action queue — every item carries the exact text, the FTC-compliant disclosure line, the specific sub rule it satisfies, and a safety checklist. You submit each one by hand.
- Govern the ratio. Reddit's own 9:1 reddiquette, enforced mechanically: the agent refuses to queue promo when your promo:value ratio is out of line.
- Never automate the account. No auto-posting, no auto-voting, no auto-comments, no browser puppeteering — the red lines that trigger sitewide bans are spelled out with the honest alternative for each (usually: Reddit Ads, or don't).
Who it's for
Indie makers who need installs from Reddit and only have one real account to do it with. Agent operators who want the never-auto-post discipline enforced by the skill, not by hoping. Marketers who are done guessing sub policies.
Why it beats a free directory download
Free "Reddit marketing" prompts tell your agent to write posts. This system was built and run against real subreddit rules for a real multi-app portfolio — the classification method, the gates, the ratio governor, and the red lines all come from what actually survives contact with mods. It ships with working API recon docs and is maintained as Reddit's rules and transport change. The field report shows real classification output before you pay.
FIELD REPORT real output, not a promise
Real recon output from running this system on business-tool subreddits in mid-2026 (product names withheld; rules change — the skill re-verifies before every queue). This is what a Phase-1 classification pass looks like.
Classification pass — five subs
r/SideProject — 🟢 GREEN. Show-and-tell and feedback posts explicitly welcome. Build-in-public and "roast my app" formats perform. Still requires disclosure and a value-led frame.
r/SaaS — 🟡 YELLOW. Surprise finding: not a weekly-thread sub. Promo is allowed anytime but capped at roughly one mention per 60 days — posts, comments, and links combined, with alt accounts counting toward the same limit. Must disclose ("Founder here"). No naked or shortened links. Separate rule bans promoting tools that automate posting on social platforms — framing matters: a product that drafts replies to a business's own reviews is fine; describe it as "automates posting" and the post dies under that rule.
r/Entrepreneur — 🟡 YELLOW. Feed promo removed on sight; promo confined to the weekly threads. Hidden gate found in recon: you must comment on others' posts before the sub lets you post at all.
r/smallbusiness — 🟡 YELLOW. Promo only in the weekly "Promote-your-business" stickied thread. A second, easy-to-miss rule bans "market research" / pain-point-fishing posts — so even a linkless "what's your biggest problem with X?" post is a removal.
r/HVAC — 🔴 RED, with a hard gate. Not just anti-spam: posting requires a mod-verified trade license or union card. An outsider cannot clear this gate at all — which recon surfaces before any time is spent drafting, instead of after a removal. Verdict: value participation impossible, Reddit Ads or skip.
What the pass changed
- Two subs assumed "probably fine" turned out to have hard gates a draft would have hit blind.
- One sub assumed weekly-thread-only (r/SaaS) actually allows direct promo under a 60-day cap — a better lane than the guessed one.
- The queue that followed contained only actions citing a verified rule, each with disclosure text and the gates checklist filled in.
That's the skill's core trade: an hour of read-only recon in exchange for never learning a sub's rules from a removal notice.
SERVICE RECORD living gear — updated as the factory learns
v1.0.0 — 2026-07-17
First issue. Ported from the factory's internal skill: sanitized for general use, methodology intact, field report captured from a real run.
Every update ships free to owners — your locker always serves the latest version.
QUESTIONS
Does the agent post to Reddit for me?›
No, and that's deliberate. Reddit detects and punishes automation; the fastest way to lose an aged account is letting a bot touch it. The skill does recon, planning, and drafting — you submit each item by hand from the paste-ready queue.
Do I need Reddit API access?›
It helps but isn't required. The recon reference walks through a free read-only OAuth app (about 2 minutes). No credentials? Paste a sub's rules text into the chat and the agent classifies it with zero network calls.
Which platforms does it run on?›
Claude Code, claude.ai Projects, Codex, or any agent that reads markdown skills. It's plain markdown, no proprietary tooling.
Will this get me around subs that ban self-promotion?›
No — and anything that promised that would be selling you a ban. For RED subs the skill's honest answer is genuine value participation or Reddit Ads. The edge is knowing which lane each sub actually allows, before you post.