Inspiration

After building a word game for the last hackathon, I needed to grow the subs around it. Lots of variables to juggle, so I built Sub Growth Lens to stop guessing and start seeing what's working.

What it does

It's a live health dashboard for mods. It shows the best times to post using a layered timezone clock, tracks post performance after publication, and surfaces activity and retention metrics like new vs returning posters and daily active trends.

How we built it

TypeScript and React on Devvit. Each install gets its own Redis storage, so snapshots are cheap and frequent. The app runs inside Reddit as a custom post with a webview.

Accomplishments that we're proud of

The timezone clock has four concentric rings showing activity across targeted timezones. It turned the puzzle of who's up into a two-second read.

Privacy holds up: all data is anonymized, nothing leaves Reddit.

What's next for Sub Growth Lens

The shipped version is the loop. The next release is about depth:

  • Deeper moderation signals. User activity patterns, account age tracking, keyword surveillance, and other vitality signs that matter as subs scale.
  • Stage-aware prioritization. A 27-member sub and a 27,000-member sub need different first reads. The current stage detection chooses sensible defaults; the next version will tune each signal's prominence per stage.
  • Customizable community pulse. Mods will choose which metric appears on the public-facing splash screen. Currently it shows app launches, my KPI.

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