Hi all! I'm brand new to building on Reddit. I came in looking for "the Reddit API" and landed on the App quickstart (Getting Started) guide. I tried to follow it as a complete beginner and want to share three spots that genuinely confused me, plus one concrete suggestion to fix one of them. Hope this helps the docs team!

Doc I followed: https://developers.reddit.com/docs/quickstart

Confusion 1 - The "about 1 minute to complete" estimate.

The intro says the tutorial "should take you about 1 minute to complete." But the real steps include installing Node.js and NPM, creating a Reddit account, going through an OAuth wizard, and installing dependencies. For a first-timer that is easily 15 to 30 minutes, not 1. The mismatch made me think I had gotten stuck or done something wrong.

Confusion 2 - Undefined terms and unclear scope (Devvit vs. the Reddit API).

As someone searching for "Reddit API," I could not tell what "Devvit" actually is versus the classic Reddit REST API. The word "Devvit" appears everywhere but is never defined on this page. Same for "Playtest," "development subreddit," and "backend functions/calls" - they are used with no one-line definition or link. I was not sure whether Devvit IS the API, a wrapper, a CLI, or a hosting platform.

Confusion 3 - A gap and ordering issue in the "Environment setup" section (web wizard to terminal).

Step 2 sends me to a website (developers.reddit.com/new) to "choose the React template," but Step 4 abruptly says "Follow the instructions on your terminal," and the success output shows local files and a "cd my-app" command. It is never explained HOW the project gets onto my machine, what command I run locally, or whether I need to install a CLI first. There is no copy-pasteable command for the single most important step: creating the project.

My concrete suggestion (fixing Confusion 3):

Add an explicit, copy-pasteable code block to the "Environment setup" section and clarify the web-to-terminal handoff. For example:

Step 1, check your Node version (must be 24.18.0+):

node --version

Step 2, install the Devvit CLI:

npm install -g devvit

Step 3, log in and create your app from the template:

devvit login

npm create devvit@latest my-app

Step 4, enter the project and start developing:

cd my-app

npm run dev

I would also add one clarifying sentence such as: "The web wizard at developers.reddit.com/new generates a command for you - copy it and paste it into your terminal in the folder where you want the project created." A short definition of "Playtest" and a one-line note on how Devvit relates to the classic Reddit API would help newcomers a lot too.

Thanks for building this. The platform looks great; I just want the on-ramp to be smoother for first-timers!

Hi,

I am testing a Devvit Web interactive post created from a moderator subreddit menu item. The app builds, uploads, and installs successfully on the automatically generated private playtest subreddit, but clicking the menu item never creates the post.

Environment

• Devvit CLI: 0.14.1
• u/devvit/web: 0.14.1
• Node.js: 24.19.0
• macOS x64
• Hono server
• App: fugitif-piece17
• Playtest version: v0.0.1.3

Configuration

{
  "post": {
    "dir": "dist/client",
    "entrypoints": {
      "default": {
        "entry": "index.html",
        "height": "tall"
      }
    }
  },
  "server": {
    "dir": "dist/server",
    "entry": "index.cjs"
  },
  "permissions": {
    "reddit": true
  },
  "menu": {
    "items": [
      {
        "label": "Créer — Pièce 17",
        "description": "Créer le mouve exécutable Pièce 17",
        "forUserType": "moderator",
        "location": "subreddit",
        "endpoint": "/internal/menu/post-create"
      }
    ]
  }
}

Server endpoint

app.post('/internal/menu/post-create', async (c) => {
  const _input = await c.req.json<MenuItemRequest>();

  if (!context.subredditName) {
    return c.json<UiResponse>({
      showToast: 'Subreddit not found in Devvit context.'
    });
  }

  const post = await reddit.submitCustomPost({
    subredditName: context.subredditName,
    title: 'Pièce 17 — Synthèse des éléments versés au dossier',
    entry: 'default'
  });

  return c.json<UiResponse>({
    showToast: `Post created: ${post.id}`
  });
});

Steps to reproduce

1. Run npm run dev.
2. Devvit reports Updating... Success! and Playtest ready.
3. Open and refresh the generated private playtest subreddit.
4. Select the moderator menu item Créer — Pièce 17.
5. No post or toast appears.
6. The terminal reports:

​

Failed to POST to Node.js server endpoint /internal/menu/post-create;
server responded with error: fetch failed

Fatal Unhandled Promise rejected:
TypeError: Cannot use 'in' operator to search for 'message' in
Failed to POST to Node.js server endpoint /internal/menu/post-create;
server responded with error: fetch failed

at serverErrorToStatus (/srv/index.cjs:18139:28)
at respond (/srv/index.cjs:20215:65)

Checks already performed

• Upgraded local Node.js from 23.1.0 to 24.19.0.
• Reinstalled dependencies with npm ci.
• Confirmed the build and both automated tests pass.
• Simplified the Reddit permission from { "enable": true } to true.
• Removed the optional textFallback.
• Retested from a filesystem path without spaces or special characters.
• Uploaded a new playtest version after each relevant change.

The error remains identical. The call appears to follow the current submitCustomPost() documentation.

Is this a current platform issue affecting submitCustomPost() in playtest, or is an additional permission/configuration step required for newly initialized apps?

I want to make my app open-source but I want to know what would be the best to manage the app testing as it needs to be done in the reddit environment, so or I share the main dev subreddit with its custom post, or a dev sub needs to be done for each contributor.

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https://preview.redd.it/yk4xcpgjxjkh1.png?width=920&format=png&auto=webp&s=98acb4891f9fb0406560d5ba5fce69dd3a5bf91b

i have done the authorisation before i.e npx devvit login, completed the authourisation then I do npx devvit playtest and this is what I get...[working for the scorespace jam]

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The story

I have participated in 5 reddit games hackathons in the past and I've not won anything major. In the first 4 hackathons, I felt that the winning games were good, but not all games justified the submission and grading criterias well. In the lastest hackathon - Games with a hook hackathon, though - a lot of people raised concerns on how the winning game did not "wow" them.

Here are some examples below:

1. Devpost discussion-

Concerns on whether the hakathon was fixed

2. Comments on the reddit announcement post-

Concerns on quality of winners

Generic response from the admin

They were not entertaining any personal feedback stating that there were over 3000 submissions. But if a game was judged fairly, the judges should have written down something about the game! Or atleast they could provide the scores. I had sent them a personal email requesting feedback, but hadn't recieved any response from them. The next day, I got a $500 helper award from the devpost team. According to the original winner announcement, I had not won any award. I had responded to the organizers asking if this was a mistake. They said that it was indeed sent to me by mistake, but it was sent to me because reddit had put forth my name.

If I accepted the award, I had to sign a paper that says I cannot sue reddit. I didn't accept the award. Something was suspicious here so I started investigating.

Problems with the judging process -

1. Mystery judges?

Usually hackathons list down the judges with their credentials. You can go to the list of all reddit hackathons on devpost and none of them have the name of judges.

Reddit hackathon judges

Here are some samples of how the judge list looks like in other hackathons -

Univabio $35k hackathon judges

a $75k google hackathon judges

2. Negligence / Judgement not thorough -

I had reached out to 3 other participants and got the list of players from each of our games. Based on the list, there was not a single common player across the 4 games. This could only mean one thing - our games were not played by the judges. Here's an anecdote from one of the participants -

The only participant who had any activity in their game

There was another participant who claimed that they had attached a video to their submission. Throughout the duration of the judging, the view count had not changed in the youtube video. -> The judges had not viewed the submission video (video was <1 min long)

3. Ghost winners -

The reddit hackathons were to encourage developers to make games on the platform. The expectation from every hackathon is that the winning game has a big community and continue to grow the community by making their game better.

Here's a list of all the reddit hackathons in the past from latest to first.

Competition	Winner	Amount won	Sub weekly visitor count
Games with a hook hackathon	r/SketchySolutions	£15,000	276
Daily games hackathon	r/bridgedit	£15,000	10
Kiro: Community games challenge	r/SoulThieves	£15,000	1300
Kiro: Community games challenge	r/blockrift	£10,000	-
Fun and games with devvit web	r/OnelineGame	£15,000	42
Fun and games with devvit web	r/hexaword	£15,000	?
Hack reddit	r/chook	£20,000	6
Games and Puzzles hackathon	r/EmojiCharades	£20,000	43
Games and Puzzles hackathon	r/pixel_together	£20,000	3
Games and Puzzles hackathon	r/DailyDungeon	£20,000	4

Note that I do not look to disrespect any creator here. I know a lot of hardwork had gone into your games and that deserves recognition. But there are also a lot of other creators whose hardwork has amounted to nothing.

4. Judges prefer "flashy visuals" over long term value

This here is my weakest point so far. But to some of you, it will be the biggest takeaway of this post. Mentally picture the winner of a google hackathon. What kind of entry do you envision? You expect it to be creative, well thought out, crazy, nerdy etc. right?
Based on my past 5 hackathons I don't think these virtues are valued in reddit hackathons -

#1

Hackathon: Games and Puzzles hackathon
My entry: Outwitquiz
My thoughts: Since the game was supposed to be on reddit, I created an equivalent of "Psych" which can be played asynchronously by all users on reddit. This was an entry for the word games category. The winning entry was emoji charades. I get that the winning entry was made well and polished, but why does this game have to be on reddit? It could be a standalone website!

#2

Hackathon: Hack reddit
My entry: Angels vs Devils
My thoughts: This made me the most sad. The overview of the hackathon said "Build a new game, social experiment, or experience on Devvit". So I thought I'd build a social experiment where users play a community minesweeper. I had built up many game modes that I could work on. The winner r/chook, was a game where you grow your chicken and feed it food by pressing buttons. (it was beautifully made though)

#3

Hackathon: Fun and games with devvit web
My entry: Divide n conquer
My thoughts: Based on past two hackathons, I stopped making experiments and designed a game. It was a game where you have a limited line length, you draw lines to capture land in a country and try to occupy the most land area and landmarks. I thought it was well thought out and fun to play, but it was not polished. I don't have many problems with this hackathon. I did good work and was sad I didn't win anything, but the winning entries truly deserved it.

#4

Hackathon: Daily games hackathon
My entry: r/totalled
My thoughts: I had won an honorable mention for this game. For this hackathon, I had kept my game concept simple and made a very well polished game. It is a game where you have to swipe across numbers in a 3x3 grid to create totals. Once you accomplish 3 totals, the game is over and you're ranked based on the time taken. Of all the games I've made so far, this is the most "Linkedin-y". I expected to win more, based on the past winners. When I saw the winner, I was shocked! An entire physics sandbox inside reddit! It was crazy good work, but I was surprised that the judges thought this game would be played regularly. Why would a reddit user play a physics sandbox daily? And why is it on reddit?

#5

Hackathon: Games with a hook hackathon
My entry: r/ShadowChess
My thoughts: Based on the previous hackathon, I believed now that the judges don't just look at "will this game be played daily". They also valued grand experiences. So I knew for sure the idea I had for this hackathon wold win. This was the best game I had ever made! Its a massive multiplayer chess game where you continue off of grandmaster positions and make 5 pre-moves. The opponents make the 5 pre-moves as well and your moves are pitted against each other based on a customized scoring system. This fit the hackathon criteria in multiple ways and had potential to do great. I feel so betrayed that the game was not even played once! My game is good when there are 100s of players playing it. It could have really used the boost of players from any sort of recognition. This hackathon was all about creating a "hook". Here's the words on the hackathon page -

\"progression, daily challenges, fresh content, social dynamics\" - my game had it all

Now you can't look at my above entries and say that none of these games deserved any award except "totalled", (which was one of my weakest entries). Especially shadowchess. Note that apart from the winner, there's 10 honorable mention awards for every hackathon.

Overall, I feel that it's best to avoid spending all that time and effort on reddit hackathons. Atleast until they bring in some transparency into the judging process.

I expect a response from the reddit team on this. Anyone who participated in this hackathon, feel free to DM me with your thoughts / information.

Hey everyone. Reading Everything wrong with the reddit games hackathons, especially the Games with a Hook event, I decided to do some digging into how these competitions are actually run and judged. What I found is honestly pretty wild.

Here is a breakdown of the biggest red flags.

1. The "Scale" Excuse vs. Reality Admins keep defending the lack of scorecards and detailed feedback by claiming there were simply too many submissions to review. We know the exact number was 708 entries. If you break down the math for a standard panel of five internal judges in a month, it is totally manageable to do basic functional tests for that many projects. They just chose not to.

2. Zero Engagement from Judges Here is the worst part. Developers who submitted private, YouTube video walkthroughs checked their analytics after the judging period ended. They had zero views. Other devs checked their backend server logs and saw zero connections. The official panel was literally advancing and ranking projects without ever watching the required video demos or actually running the code.

3. Funding "Ghost Winners" Because the judges were seemingly just looking at flashy screenshots instead of testing actual gameplay or retention, Reddit is burning massive prize pools on apps that die immediately. Top prizes of $15,000 to $20,000 are going to apps that drop to single digit active weekly users right after the prize money clears. We are talking 3 to 10 visitors a week. That completely defeats the purpose of the Devvit ecosystem and the Developer Funds, which require thousands of daily active users to be sustainable.

4. The $500 "Hush Money" When one of the main whistleblowers called the admins out on all this and asked for their scorecard, the admins ignored the email. But the very next day, that exact user was randomly sent a $500 "Helper Award" through Devpost. Admins later claimed it was a mistake. The problem is that accepting any prize money means signing legal waivers and non-disparagement clauses. It really looks like a clumsy attempt to quietly silence a critic so they wouldn't have to produce a scorecard that didn't exist.

5. Are there hidden admin connections? I also checked to see if the winning developers were secretly moderating other subreddits alongside the admins outside of the hackathons. I did not find any proof of that. There is definitely a visible clique of people on Discord who just praise the admins all day, but I found no hard evidence of secret backend admin powers for the winners.

TLDR: The judging process is structurally broken. If Reddit wants these hackathons to actually work, they need public rubrics, verifiable proof that judges actually tested the apps, and milestone payouts instead of lump sums for apps that are dead in a week.

Would love to hear what other devs who participated think about this.

Hey! We recently launched the game r/sidewars . I tried sharing it on r/gamesonreddit, but the post immediately got flagged as spam.

I shared the same thing in a few other relevant subreddits afterward and had no issues there.

Does GamesOnReddit use any specific spam filters or posting rules that might be triggering this?

I'm building a Reddit-native dating/matching app using Devvit, initially targeting some niche communities.

The idea is basically:

• Users create a dating profile
• Swipe right/left on other users
• Mutual matches
• Report/block functionality
• Subreddit moderators can moderate users and remove profiles/accounts
• The app would only be available to participating communities

I've seen quite a few dating-related posts in those subreddits where people mention meeting their partners through Reddit, so I think there could be a legitimate use case.

My questions are:

1. Is a dating/matchmaking app like this allowed on Devvit?
2. Are there any specific restrictions around dating apps, user profiles, or user-generated personal information?
3. Can an app like this participate in Devvit's monetization/payout programs?
4. If so, what kinds of monetization are permitted?
5. Are there any privacy/data-storage requirements I should be aware of before building it?

I want to make sure the concept is actually viable within Devvit's rules before investing too much time into it.

App: fragranceswaps-bot
Subreddit: r/fragranceswaps

The app is currently installed and working on version 0.0.7.2. New versions build and upload successfully, but any attempt to upgrade the existing installation fails with:

Error upgrading installation: Error upgrading installation. Undoing upgrade.

This occurs both with npx devvit playtest fragranceswaps and from the Developers Portal Update button.

I also restored the exact known-good source/config and uploaded a fresh version; the upgrade still fails. devvit view shows the old and new versions requesting the same capabilities/permissions. devvit list installs fragranceswaps confirms the installation remains on 0.0.7.2.

I do not want to uninstall/reinstall because the current installation has Redis data containing user transaction/flair counters that I need to preserve.

Can you inspect/reset the installation upgrade state without deleting the installation’s Redis data?

Release Date: August 17, 2026

Additional Source Roots

Add additionalSourceRoots to devvit.json to include source files outside your project directory in source packages submitted for review. This helps apps with unconventional builds, such as external source folders that compile into dist/.

additionalSourceRoots works with existing source ignore behavior, so you can include the extra root paths reviewers need while still excluding files covered by your ignore rules.

Post Search

Use reddit.searchPosts() and subreddit.searchPosts() to search for posts with a query and other search parameters.

Form Context Fix

context.postId is now defined in form submission handlers when a form is opened from a post menu item, matching the existing context.commentId behavior for comment menu items.

Wiki Deprecation Correction

Corrected the 0.14.0 wiki deprecation notice: reddit.getWikiPage(subredditName, pageName) remains supported. Only reddit.getWikiPage(subredditName, pageName, revisionId) is deprecated.

CLI Node.js Warning

The Devvit CLI now warns once during playtest, upload, and publish if your local Node.js version is older than the supported version. The warning is informational and does not block the command.

In one of my subs, we have a highly configured automod, and there is one topic that results in a lot of auto-removed comments based on keywords.

To reduce mod queue, these are intentionally set to remove instead of filter.

I'm looking for an app that would notify mods via notification or modmail if there are a number of comment removals in post based on a given threshold. That way mods could scroll through the thread and apply mod actions for especially rule-breaking behavior (or approve if any false positives occured).

An ideal addition would be a way to configure this by post flair as well.

Thanks!

Posted based off Reddit’s site wide rules 1 and 2