reddit-lurker

Every comment. Every reply. 77% fewer tokens.

Reddit MCP server for AI coding tools. Fetches full comment trees at any depth, compresses them into compact notation, and delivers 77% fewer tokens than raw JSON.

Most Reddit tools fetch top-level comments and stop. Lurk expands every collapsed branch, resolves every +N more replies placeholder, and reconstructs the full tree.

Quick Start

npx reddit-lurker

This downloads the platform binary and runs the MCP server. Add it to your editor config for persistent use:

Claude Code, Cursor, Windsurf, Cline:

{
  "mcpServers": {
    "lurk": {
      "command": "npx",
      "args": ["-y", "reddit-lurker"]
    }
  }
}

VS Code (Copilot):

{
  "servers": {
    "lurk": {
      "command": "npx",
      "args": ["-y", "reddit-lurker"]
    }
  }
}

What It Does

• Full comment trees at any depth — every collapsed branch expanded
• 77% fewer tokens than JSON, 42% fewer than Markdown
• Smart limiting — threads with 200+ comments preview first, expand on demand
• Adaptive caching — 2-30min TTLs by content type, 50MB LRU cap
• Multi-subreddit search — comma-separated subs, parallel fetch, deduped results
• All URL formats — reddit.com, old.reddit.com, redd.it short links, etc.
• Single binary, zero runtime dependencies

Token Savings

| Format | ~Tokens (109-comment thread) | |--------|------------------------------| | Raw Reddit JSON | ~12,000 | | Markdown | ~5,200 | | Lurk compact | ~3,050 |

OAuth (Optional)

For 6x rate limits (60 req/min instead of 10), set environment variables:

LURK_CLIENT_ID=your_client_id
LURK_CLIENT_SECRET=your_client_secret

Or use lurk auth from the standalone binary for interactive setup.

Other Install Methods

• Homebrew: brew install ProgenyAlpha/tap/lurk
• Go: go install github.com/ProgenyAlpha/reddit-lurker@latest
• Direct download: GitHub Releases
• Install script: curl -fsSL https://raw.githubusercontent.com/ProgenyAlpha/reddit-lurker/master/install.sh | bash

Documentation

Full docs, benchmarks, and CLI reference: github.com/ProgenyAlpha/reddit-lurker

License

MIT