I automated my Reddit marketing so I could focus on coding — here's how adauto works

#adauto

The problem: building in silence

You ship a CLI tool, a library, or a SaaS. It's genuinely useful. But nobody knows it exists.

Posting on Reddit feels like spam. Writing dev.to articles takes hours. Twitter threads require a skill set most of us don't have. So you keep coding, and your project stays invisible.

I built adauto because I was tired of this pattern.

What adauto does differently

Most marketing tools are schedulers. They take your content and post it at 2pm because "that's optimal engagement time." That misses the real problem: writing the content in the first place.

adauto is a generation-first automation tool. It:

1. Scans the community before writing anything

Before it creates a single post, adauto reads the hot and new sections of your target subreddit. It analyzes what's getting upvoted — tone, topics, post length, even time of day. This isn't generic SEO advice; it's real-time awareness of what that specific community is receptive to right now.

pip install adauto
adauto campaign create --target r/golang --product "my CLI tool"

The first step is always a pulse scan, not content generation.

2. Generates platform-native content via deepstrain

Once it understands the community, adauto uses deepstrain (the same engine this repo uses) to plan and write the post. A Reddit post is different from a dev.to article is different from a HackerNews submission. The tone, structure, and depth change per platform automatically.

3. Filters through 3 layers of ethics checks

I didn't want another spam machine. Every generated post passes through:

Illegal content filter (never-include)
Spam/shilling filter (does this read like an ad?)
Fake-review filter (is this claiming something untrue?)

If a post fails any layer, you never see it. I'd rather generate 0 posts than 1 bad one.

4. Requires your approval — every single time

Nothing gets posted automatically. You get a draft in the terminal or web UI. You edit, approve, or discard. The human is always in the loop.

5. Learns from what works

Here's the part I'm most proud of: when a post earns upvotes and comments, adauto saves it as a few-shot example. Future generations use your best posts as style references. The system gets better the more you use it.

A concrete example

I maintain a little database migration tool. Here's roughly what happened my first week:

adauto campaign create --target r/programming --product "db-warden"
Pulse scan found that "lightweight alternatives to Alembic" was a recurring topic
Generated a Show HN-style post: "Db-warden: a migration tool that fits in one file"
I edited the title slightly, approved it
42 upvotes, 15 comments — genuine discussion, not marketing

The post didn't go viral. But 15 people tried the tool, 3 filed issues, and 1 became a regular contributor. That's real traction for a solo project.

The honest trade-offs

adauto isn't magic. It won't turn a mediocre product into a hit. It won't write content that's as insightful as what you'd produce after deep thought. And the free tier is limited to one campaign (enough to test if the approach works for you).

What it does well: remove the friction of starting. Most developers never make their first post. adauto gets you past that barrier in 10 minutes.

Pro ($19/mo) unlocks unlimited campaigns, the scheduler (run as a daemon, post at optimal intervals), and all four platforms: Reddit, dev.to, Twitter/X, and HackerNews.