How I Cracked Reddit Anti-Bot with Playwright (Shadow DOM + Real Keystrokes)

The Problem

I have been building 8 SaaS tools with AI (zero coding) and needed Reddit backlinks for SEO. But Reddit anti-bot blocked every automated login attempt.

The Two Breakthroughs

1. Real Keystrokes, Not JS Injection

Most automation scripts inject: element.value = "password". Reddit React frontend ignores this. It only recognizes real keyboard events.

// Wrong - Reddit ignores this
await page.fill("#password", "mypassword");

// Right - React recognizes each keydown
await page.keyboard.type("mypassword", {delay: 0});

page.keyboard.type fires keydown -> keypress -> keyup for every character. React controlled components only update on these native events.

2. Penetrating Shadow DOM

The post editor title, body, and submit button were hidden inside Shadow DOM. document.querySelector returned nothing.

The fix: recursive deepQuery walking through each element shadowRoot.

Result

30 seconds from login to published post on r/SideProject. One dofollow backlink.

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Building 8 tools with AI + 0 code. Journey at livephotokit.com