Ask Radar

Ask Radar helps moderators find questions from posts and comments. No AI. No external dependencies.

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Ask Radar

Hackathon: Reddit Mod Tools & Migrated Apps Hackathon 2026 Team: u/Capable_Cable_6744 Platform: Devvit Web

Problem

Moderators regularly spend hours manually searching through posts and comments to find valuable questions for:

  • AMAs
  • Guest Q&As
  • Community roundups
  • FAQ creation
  • Educational resources
  • Recurring discussion threads

As communities grow, this becomes increasingly difficult:

  • High-quality questions get buried
  • Duplicate questions consume attention
  • Low-effort comments create noise
  • Manual review becomes slow and repetitive

Finding the signal inside large discussion threads is often harder than running the event itself.

Solution

Ask Radar is a moderator-first question discovery and curation tool built on Devvit.

Instead of manually scrolling through thousands of comments, moderators enter keywords and a date range. Ask Radar scans subreddit history, extracts likely questions, ranks them by relevance, removes duplicates, and returns a clean list ready for review or export.

What previously required hours of reading becomes a process that takes seconds.

How Ask Radar Works

Ask Radar uses a transparent multi-stage pipeline designed for speed, explainability, and moderator trust.

Step 1 — Fetch

Moderators enter:

  • Keywords
  • Date range
  • Scan limits

Ask Radar automatically detects the active subreddit and scans:

  • Up to 500 posts
  • Up to 100 comments per post
  • Up to 180 days of subreddit history

No manual subreddit configuration is required.

Step 2 — Normalize

Raw Reddit content is cleaned before processing:

  • Markdown removed
  • URLs removed
  • usernames removed
  • redundant punctuation removed
  • formatting noise removed

The goal is to convert Reddit content into clean readable text.

Step 3 — Split

Posts and comments are broken into meaningful candidate segments using:

  • sentence boundaries
  • question boundaries
  • line breaks
  • bullet structures

Long comments containing multiple questions become multiple candidates.

Step 4 — Detect Questions

Question detection uses fast heuristic matching:

Direct indicators

  • Ends with ?

  • Starts with:

    • What
    • How
    • Why
    • Can
    • Should
    • Is
    • Are
    • Do
    • Will
    • and similar patterns

Curiosity patterns

  • "I wonder..."
  • "Curious about..."
  • "Want to know..."
  • "Does anyone..."
  • "Has anyone..."

Quality filters reject:

  • spam
  • excessive symbols
  • repeated characters
  • mostly links
  • deleted content

Step 5 — Score

Each detected question receives a weighted relevance score.

Scoring considers:

Signal Purpose
Keyword matches Topic relevance
Exact phrase matching Higher specificity
Multi-keyword presence Strong contextual alignment
Question structure Better confidence
Community popularity Social validation
Recency Freshness
Length quality Readability
Spam penalties Noise reduction

Questions with weak or irrelevant signals are automatically removed.

Step 6 — Deduplicate

Duplicate and near-duplicate questions are merged.

When duplicates exist:

  • Highest-quality candidate is preserved
  • Comments are preferred over post text
  • Redundant questions disappear automatically

Step 7 — Present & Export

Results appear as a ranked and filterable moderator workspace.

Features include:

  • Relevance score badges
  • Source labels
  • Keyword highlighting
  • Quality tags
  • Bulk selection
  • Search and filters
  • Markdown export
  • JSON export
  • Plain text export

Key Features

Moderator-only access

Only subreddit moderators can install and use Ask Radar.

Demo mode

Pre-seeded sample data allows instant evaluation without waiting for live scans.

Bulk actions

Moderators can:

  • select multiple questions
  • copy results
  • export Markdown
  • export JSON

Smart filters

Filter by:

  • score
  • source type
  • keywords
  • relevance

Dark mode

Automatic theme switching based on device preference.

Scan cancellation

Long-running scans can be safely stopped without losing progress.

Safe limits

Built-in safeguards include:

  • 500 post maximum
  • 100 comments per post
  • 180-day scan limit
  • deleted content skipped automatically

Moderator Workflow

  1. Install Ask Radar from Reddit App Directory
  2. Open Ask Radar from Mod Tools
  3. Enter keywords and date range
  4. Click Scan Questions
  5. Review ranked results
  6. Filter and select useful questions
  7. Export results

Why Heuristics Instead of AI?

Ask Radar intentionally avoids external AI systems.

Speed

Heuristic processing runs almost instantly.

Transparency

Moderators can understand exactly why a question ranked highly.

Privacy

No content leaves Reddit.

Zero cost

No external APIs, usage limits, or paid services.

Real-World Impact

r/IAmA

Large AMA threads often generate thousands of comments.

Ask Radar helps moderators quickly surface the strongest audience questions for guests.

Estimated time savings

2–4 hours → under 1 minute

r/modguide

Moderators frequently curate FAQs and educational resources.

Ask Radar helps surface recurring, high-value community questions across historical discussions.

Estimated time savings

3–5 hours → approximately 1 minute

r/science

Scientific AMAs require high-quality and topic-relevant discussion.

Ask Radar naturally prioritizes:

  • deeper questions
  • better structure
  • stronger relevance

Estimated time savings

2–3 hours → under 1 minute

Technical Implementation

Platform

Built entirely on Devvit Web.

Server

  • Hono API
  • Devvit serverless functions
  • Reddit API integration
  • extraction services
  • scoring services
  • deduplication services

Client

  • React 19
  • Vite
  • responsive moderator interface
  • local persistence
  • dynamic filters

Shared Layer

  • TypeScript contracts
  • centralized configuration
  • demo fixtures

Testing

131 unit tests across:

  • extraction
  • scoring
  • deduplication
  • validation
  • filtering
  • exports

Why Ask Radar Matters

Moderators should spend their time engaging with communities — not digging through thousands of comments.

Ask Radar transforms large discussion archives into clear, ranked, actionable questions in seconds.

It reduces manual effort, increases discoverability, and helps moderators focus on the conversations that matter most.

Find signal. Ignore noise.

Built With

  • devvit
  • hono
  • react
  • vite
  • vscode
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