Mod Vote

Vote buttons
Form for starting voting

Inspiration

Every mod team has had this conversation: a borderline post goes up, one mod wants to remove it, another thinks it should stay, and by the time everyone weighs in the moment has passed — or worse, one mod acts unilaterally and the team is divided. Moderation is supposed to be a team effort, but the tools have never reflected that.

I built Mod Vote because the problem is simple and the solution should be too. Mod teams need a way to vote on content decisions privately, asynchronously, and without leaving Reddit. No external tools, no Discord polls, no waiting for everyone to be online at the same time.

What it does

Mod Vote is a private voting tool for Reddit mod teams. A mod sees a borderline post and taps Start Mod Vote from the post menu. The entire mod team gets a modmail notification with a link to vote. Each mod casts their vote — Remove, Keep, or Needs Discussion — directly inside Reddit. When the vote closes, the winning decision executes automatically. Results go to modmail with a full tally and audit trail.

Key features:

Anonymous or named voting — configurable per vote
Quorum enforcement — minimum votes required before a result executes
Automatic execution — Remove actually removes the post via the Reddit API
Tie-breaking — explicit handling, no silent defaults
Cancel vote — vote creator can cancel if situation resolves early
Vote History Dashboard — full history with outcomes, dates, and tallies
Participation Tracker — shows each mod's participation rate
Reminder modmail — sent within 2 hours of deadline if quorum not reached
Escalation on inconclusive — vote creator tagged to follow up
Welcome modmail on install — mod team gets setup instructions automatically

How I built it

Mod Vote is built entirely on Devvit using the Mod Tool template. The server runs on Hono, a lightweight HTTP framework. All vote data is stored in Devvit's built-in Redis — no external database needed. Notifications use the Reddit Modmail API, and post removal uses the Reddit moderator API.

The architecture is straightforward: menu items in devvit.json point to Hono route handlers. Menu presses show forms. Form submissions write to Redis and send modmail. A shared executeVoteResult function handles the decision logic and is called by both the manual close handler and the deadline expiry check.

Tech stack:

Devvit (Mod Tool template)
TypeScript
Hono (server routing)
Redis (vote storage and audit trail)
Reddit Modmail API (notifications)
Reddit Moderator API (post removal)

Challenges

The biggest challenge was the template architecture. The Mod Tool template uses a web server pattern (Hono + HTTP endpoints) rather than the classic Devvit pattern (Devvit.addMenuItem). All the documentation examples use the classic pattern, so I had to reverse-engineer how forms, menu items, and triggers work in the web server model from scratch.

The second challenge was building on a phone using Termux. No desktop, no IDE, no split screen. Every file edit was done in nano, every error fixed by reading stack traces on a 6-inch screen. It forced me to write clean, simple code because debugging complex code on mobile is genuinely painful.

What I learned

How Devvit's Hono-based server architecture works end to end
How to structure Redis keys for a multi-vote, multi-subreddit app
How Reddit modmail works as a notification channel for mod tools
That the best mod tools are invisible they fit into existing workflows rather than creating new ones