OpenClaw Reddit Digest Bot: Step-by-Step Build

Building an OpenClaw Reddit digest bot is a popular weekend project — by the end, you have a personalized daily digest of the best Reddit content from your favorite communities, filtered by quality, summarized intelligently, and delivered to Telegram. Here's the complete build guide.

What You're Building

A scheduled agent that:

1. Fetches top posts from specified subreddits
2. Filters by score threshold and recency
3. Summarizes the most interesting posts
4. Delivers a formatted digest to Telegram daily

Required Skills

python -m openclaw skill install reddit-reader
python -m openclaw skill install web-browse  # For reading linked articles

Alternatively, use the web-search skill with Reddit-specific queries if the Reddit skill isn't available in your region.

Configuration

In openclaw.json:

{
  "skills": {
    "reddit-reader": {
      "client_id": "${REDDIT_CLIENT_ID}",
      "client_secret": "${REDDIT_CLIENT_SECRET}",
      "user_agent": "openclaw-digest/1.0",
      "subreddits": [
        {"name": "MachineLearning", "min_score": 500},
        {"name": "LocalLLaMA", "min_score": 100},
        {"name": "AIAgents", "min_score": 50},
        {"name": "SideProject", "min_score": 200}
      ]
    }
  }
}

Get Reddit API credentials at reddit.com/prefs/apps.

Scheduled Digest

{
  "scheduler": {
    "tasks": [{
      "name": "reddit_digest",
      "cron": "0 18 * * *",
      "action": "run",
      "prompt": "Fetch today's top posts from my monitored subreddits. Filter to posts scoring above the configured minimum. For each qualifying post: include the title, subreddit, score, and a 1-2 sentence summary of the content or linked article. Group by subreddit. Flag any posts that seem particularly important or trending. Deliver as a formatted Telegram message.",
      "output_channel": "telegram"
    }]
  }
}

Sample Digest Output

📰 Your Reddit Digest — Tuesday May 7

🤖 r/MachineLearning (3 posts)
• "New benchmark shows reasoning improvements..." [1,247 ↑]
  Summary: Researchers published results showing...
• "Ask HN: How are you using AI agents in production?" [892 ↑]  
  Summary: Community discussion thread with...

🏠 r/LocalLLaMA (2 posts)
• "Qwen 3 running at 40tok/s on M4 Pro" [543 ↑]
  Summary: User reports running Qwen 3 72B...

Quality Filtering

Add quality filtering to your prompt to reduce noise:

"Exclude: self-promotion posts, posts without substance (just memes or images), and posts that are simple announcements without discussion. Prioritize posts with 50+ comments as they indicate genuine community discussion."

Frequently Asked Questions

Can the bot read the comments on interesting posts?

Yes. Modify your prompt to include: "For the top 2-3 posts, also summarize the top 5 comments to capture community reaction."

Is Reddit's API still free in 2026?

Reddit's API has paid tiers for high-volume access. Personal use (a few subreddits, once daily) remains within free tier limits.

How do I add more subreddits without changing config?

Ask your agent: "Add r/entrepreneurship to my Reddit digest with minimum score 100." Your agent updates the config via the skill's configuration API.