Drama Radar

Inspiration

This came from a thing I’ve seen happen on Reddit a lot: a thread looks normal for a while, then two people start going back and forth, more people pile in, the tone shifts, and suddenly the modqueue is full.

By that point, mods are usually stuck cleaning up instead of steering things earlier.

Drama Radar is my attempt at a lighter-weight tool for that moment. It is not trying to be an auto-mod judge. It is more like: “hey, this thread is starting to look spicy, maybe take a look.”

What it does

Drama Radar watches active threads and gives mods a simple risk score.

The score is based on things that are pretty easy for a human mod to understand:

• comments coming in fast
• long reply chains
• the same users arguing with each other repeatedly
• rule-ish words showing up
• sudden spikes in activity
• new people entering the thread
• reports, when available

Each flagged thread explains why it was flagged. That part felt important to me. A mystery score is not very useful when you are trying to moderate a real community.

The app suggests actions like watching the thread, pinning a reminder, slowing things down, or sending it to human review. It does not ban, remove, or lock anything on its own.

How I built it

I built it with Devvit Web, TypeScript, React, Redis, Devvit triggers, and scheduled jobs.

The app listens for post, comment, and report activity, stores active thread state, scores threads, and shows everything in a custom post dashboard for mods.

I also added a small demo mode with three states: calm, heating up, and high risk. I kept it limited on purpose so the demo feels more like an actual tool and less like a flashy animation.

Challenges

The main challenge was keeping the tool helpful without making it feel creepy or heavy-handed.

Moderation tools can get weird fast if they pretend to know too much. So I tried to keep Drama Radar focused on clear signals and human decisions.

Another challenge was cutting the demo down. I originally made it more animated, but it started to feel like a pitch page instead of a mod tool. The final version is quieter and more functional.

What I learned

I learned a lot about Devvit Web, especially custom posts, server endpoints, triggers, Redis, and publishing.

I also learned that explainability matters a lot for moderation tools. “Risk: 82” is not enough. Mods need to know what changed, who is looping, and why the app thinks the thread is worth checking.

Built With

• devvit-triggers
• devvit-web
• react
• reddit
• redis
• tailwind-css
• typescript
• vite