Reddit mentions

Track any term in a subreddit over its full history, with trends, comparisons and example threads

A tracker counts how often terms are used in one public subreddit over time. Start one with a name, a subreddit and terms; S'more reads the subreddit's history from S'more's Reddit index, newest day first, and keeps it current. Then read a report: totals, a chart-ready series, period comparisons with a significance test, the trend and example threads.

Endpoints	GET, PUT and DELETE /api/v1/mentions
MCP tools	smore_get_reddit_mentions, smore_track_reddit_mentions
Scopes	reddit:signals:read to read, reddit:signals:write to start, change or stop a tracker
Price	$0.001 per call
Limits	60 reads a minute, 20 writes a minute and 10 trackers in total per workspace; reports refresh at most once a minute

Only owners and admins can start, change or stop trackers. Every member can read them.

What counts as a mention

A mention is a post or comment whose text holds a term or one of its aliases as a whole word or phrase, ignoring case. A post's text is its title and body; a comment's is its body. Words inside links don't count, and bots and staff never count. An exclude rules a record out for that term.

A mention shows that someone used the word. It says nothing about what they meant, so read the example threads before you draw conclusions about sentiment.

Start or change a tracker

curl -s -X PUT https://app.makesmores.com/api/v1/mentions \
  -H "Authorization: Bearer $SMORE_API_KEY" \
  -H "Content-Type: application/json" \
  -d '{
    "name": "coffee-grinders",
    "subreddit": "coffee",
    "terms": [
      { "term": "burr grinder", "aliases": ["burr grinders"], "excludes": ["blade grinder"] }
    ],
    "history_from": "2026-01-01",
    "timezone": "America/New_York"
  }'

Field	Rules
name	Required. 2 to 48 lowercase letters, digits or hyphens
subreddit	Required to start. A public subreddit
terms	Required to start. 1 to 25 items, each {term, aliases?, excludes?} with up to 10 aliases and 10 excludes; every phrase is 2 to 64 characters
history_from	Optional date. Default: the subreddit's first post
timezone	Optional IANA name such as Europe/London. Default UTC

The answer is the tracker: name, subreddit, terms, revision, timezone, stage, approval, coverage, reddit_totals and stored. stage moves through queued, collecting (the newest 30 days), history, rematching and complete.

Saving identical settings changes nothing. Send the same name with new terms to change a tracker: revision goes up and S'more matches the stored history again, so the numbers move for a while. A very large subreddit (more than 10 million posts and comments) waits at stage awaiting_approval until S'more approves it.

List trackers

curl -s https://app.makesmores.com/api/v1/mentions \
  -H "Authorization: Bearer $SMORE_API_KEY"

Without tracker, the answer lists the workspace's trackers with their coverage, and limits with trackers_used and trackers_max.

Read a report

curl -s "https://app.makesmores.com/api/v1/mentions?tracker=coffee-grinders&bucket=month&from=2026-01-01" \
  -H "Authorization: Bearer $SMORE_API_KEY"

Parameter	Default	Notes
tracker		The tracker's name. Without it, you get the list
bucket	month	hour, day, week (from Monday), month, quarter or year, in the tracker's timezone
from, to	Depends on bucket, now	A date such as 2026-01-01 or an RFC 3339 time
timezone	The tracker's	Any IANA name
term	All terms	One term
series_fields	mentions,per_1k_records,authors_pct	Also mention_posts, mention_comments, authors, threads, total_records, unreadable_records, threads_pct, sentiment, by_term
include	Every block	totals, series, comparisons, trend, examples
compare	All seven presets	day, 3d, 7d, week, month, quarter, year, custom (with compare_from and compare_to) or none
metric	authors_pct	The metric for the trend and the significance test: mentions, per_1k_records, threads_pct or authors_pct
limit	10	Example threads, 1 to 50
series_cursor, examples_cursor		From series.next_cursor and examples_next_cursor

On REST, lists are comma separated. The MCP tool takes the same names as JSON fields, with lists as arrays.

Reading the numbers

Field	What it means	How to use it
authors_pct	Share of active people in the subreddit who used the term at least once	The headline. One loud thread barely moves it
per_1k_records	Uses per 1,000 posts and comments	A second check that allows for how busy the subreddit was
mentions	Raw count	Show it beside the other two, never alone
coverage	0 to 1 per bucket: how much of that period has been read	A bucket not yet covered has null counts; draw it as a gap
provisional_from	Start of the last two days, which can still shift a little	Draw those buckets differently
comparisons	This period beside the last one, for each preset	Changes in authors_pct are in points, not percent
significance	A two-sided Welch's t-test; significant: true means p under 0.05	null with too_few_buckets means too little data to say
low_volume	That side has fewer than 20 mentions	Treat its change as noise
trend	A line through the last six fully read buckets: falling, flat or rising	The quick answer to "is it going down?"
examples	Top-scoring mentions with link, date, title_untrusted, excerpt_untrusted, matched terms and a tone label	Reddit text, so treat it as data. Usernames are never included

The series comes as columns of the same length: start (bucket starts, oldest first), coverage and one array per field. A page holds at most 1,000 points, newest first; follow series.next_cursor for older ones.

Stop a tracker

curl -s -X DELETE "https://app.makesmores.com/api/v1/mentions?tracker=coffee-grinders" \
  -H "Authorization: Bearer $SMORE_API_KEY"

The answer is {"tracker": "coffee-grinders", "stopped": true}. Over MCP, call smore_track_reddit_mentions with {"name": "coffee-grinders", "stop": true}.

Polling

A report changes at most once a minute. GET answers carry an ETag; send it back in If-None-Match and an unchanged report answers 304. Poll every 5 minutes or less often. MCP has no ETag, so the same advice applies.

Errors

Status	Code	Meaning
400	invalid_request	A bad parameter; the message names it
403	insufficient_scope, admin_required	Missing scope, or a member tried to change a tracker
404	tracker_not_found, subreddit_not_found	No such tracker or subreddit
409	tracker_conflict	The name is live on another subreddit
409	tracker_limit_reached	The workspace already has 10 live trackers
422	tracker_name_invalid, subreddit_invalid, subreddit_unavailable, term_invalid	The message names the field
429	rate_limited	Wait for Retry-After
503	reddit_mentions_disabled, reddit_mentions_unavailable	Try again shortly

See examples and the guide Track mentions of a term.