RedditTLDR

A floating bubble that summarizes any Reddit post with a single tap — powered by Claude AI. No root required. Works inside the official Reddit app.

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What is RedditTLDR?

RedditTLDR is an Android app that draws a small draggable bubble over the Reddit app. Tap it while reading any post — the app captures the post text, sends it to the Anthropic Claude API, and shows a concise summary in an overlay card without ever leaving Reddit.

Problem it solves: Reddit posts are often long. You want to know if it's worth reading before committing. RedditTLDR gives you a 1–7 bullet summary in about 3 seconds, directly on top of whatever you're reading.

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Features

• One-tap post summary — tap the bubble, get a summary. No app switching.
• Comment summarization — optional second tap summarizes the captured comment thread
• Three summary lengths — Short (1–2 sentences), Medium (TL;DR + bullets), Detailed (full context)
• Three Claude models — Haiku (fastest/cheapest), Sonnet (balanced), Opus (highest quality)
• Draggable bubble — docks to either screen edge; drag to the dismiss target to hide
• Partial-content warning — banner shown when a very long post hits the scroll cap
• Copy button — copies post + comments summary as plain text
• Your key, your data — API key stored encrypted on-device; nothing is sent anywhere except your own Anthropic API endpoint

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Requirements

• Android 8.0+ (API 26+)
• The official Reddit app (com.reddit.frontpage)
• An Anthropic API key — Haiku is the default model and costs fractions of a cent per summary

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Installation

Option A — Sideload the APK (easiest)

1. Download RedditTLDR-debug.apk from the Releases page
2. Enable Install from unknown sources in Android Settings → Apps → Special app access
3. Open the APK on your device and install
4. Follow the in-app setup wizard

Option B — Build from source

See Building from source below.

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Setup (3 steps)

1. Grant permissions — open RedditTLDR, tap each permission row:

   • Accessibility service — required so the app can read the post text
   • Display over other apps — required to show the floating bubble
   • Notifications — required to keep the foreground service alive

2. Add your Claude API key — paste your key from console.anthropic.com. It is stored encrypted and never leaves your device.

3. Open Reddit — the bubble appears automatically. Tap it to summarize.

Note: After installing or updating the app, you may need to toggle the Accessibility service off and on in Settings → Accessibility → RedditTLDR for new capabilities to take effect.

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How it works

Reddit app is open
       │
       │  AccessibilityService watches window events
       ▼
 [Floating bubble]  ←── you tap here
       │
       │  Bubble becomes non-touchable so gestures pass through to Reddit
       ▼
 PostExtractor
   • Scrolls up to the top of the post (max 5 swipes)
   • Swipes down through the post + comments (max 6 swipes)
   • Reads the accessibility tree after each swipe to capture visible text
   • Uses fingerprint hashing to detect when the page actually moved
       │
       ▼
 ClaudeRepository
   • Sends captured text to Anthropic API with your chosen model + length
   • Post-summary prompt: "summarize only what the OP wrote, ignore comments"
   • Comments-summary prompt: "summarize the discussion in the comments"
       │
       ▼
 SummaryOverlay
   • Styled card overlaid on top of Reddit
   • "Summarize comments" button uses already-captured text — no second API call
   • Copy button exports everything as plain text

Why AccessibilityService and not the Reddit API?

Reddit's official API has restrictive rate limits and requires OAuth. The Accessibility approach reads whatever is on-screen, works anonymously, requires no Reddit account, and survives Reddit API changes. The tradeoff is that the app only works with the official Reddit app (com.reddit.frontpage), not third-party clients.

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Building from source

Requires: Android Studio with JBR (the bundled JDK). Clone the repo, then:

JAVA_HOME="/path/to/Android Studio/jbr" ./gradlew assembleDebug

On Windows (Git Bash / WSL):

JAVA_HOME="/c/Program Files/Android/Android Studio/jbr" ./gradlew assembleDebug

The APK lands at app/build/outputs/apk/debug/app-debug.apk.

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Architecture

app/src/main/java/com/stanley/reddittldr/
├── MainActivity.kt                    # Compose settings screen (API key, model, length)
├── api/
│   ├── ClaudeRepository.kt            # Anthropic API — summarize() + summarizeComments()
│   └── models/                        # Request / response data classes
├── data/
│   ├── ClaudeModel.kt                 # Model enum (Haiku / Sonnet / Opus)
│   ├── SettingsRepository.kt          # EncryptedSharedPreferences wrapper
│   └── SummaryLength.kt
├── reddit/
│   ├── PostContent.kt                 # Extraction result data class
│   ├── PostExtractor.kt               # The scroll-and-capture engine
│   └── RedditJsonClient.kt            # Unused in main path; kept for post-ID lookup
├── service/
│   ├── BubbleService.kt               # Foreground service — bubble lifecycle
│   └── RedditWatcherService.kt        # AccessibilityService — start/stop BubbleService
├── ui/
│   ├── OnboardingSection.kt           # Permission setup UI (Compose)
│   ├── SettingsScreen.kt              # Full settings screen (Compose)
│   └── overlay/
│       ├── BubbleView.kt              # Draggable circle
│       ├── DismissScrimView.kt        # Bottom gradient on drag
│       ├── DismissTargetView.kt       # Drag-to-dismiss X target
│       └── SummaryOverlay.kt          # Summary card (classic Views — Compose
│                                      # doesn't work with TYPE_APPLICATION_OVERLAY)
└── util/
    ├── DebugLog.kt                    # Per-session in-memory log + file flush
    └── PermissionState.kt

Key design decisions:

Decision	Why
Gesture-based scrolling (dispatchGesture) instead of ACTION_SCROLL_DOWN	ACTION_SCROLL_DOWN targets the largest-by-area scrollable, which on Reddit's post screen is the comments LazyColumn, not the post body. Gestures hit whatever is under the touch point.
Bubble made non-touchable during extraction	Dispatched gestures were absorbed by the draggable bubble window sitting above Reddit. FLAG_NOT_TOUCHABLE lets them pass through.
No body/comment split at extraction time	Reddit's comment-section header text varies by app version. Splitting by marker is fragile. Instead, Claude's system prompt tells the model what to focus on.
Classic Views for all overlay UI	Compose composables do not render correctly inside TYPE_APPLICATION_OVERLAY windows.
canPerformGestures="true" in accessibility config	Without this declaration the system silently drops dispatched gestures — no error, callback just never fires.

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Privacy & Security

Protection	Implementation
API key storage	EncryptedSharedPreferences with AES-256-GCM master key
Screenshot protection	FLAG_SECURE on settings activity — key never appears in recents or screenshots
Backup exclusion	allowBackup=false; data_extraction_rules.xml explicitly excludes the prefs file from cloud backup and device transfer
Network security	network_security_config.xml — HTTPS only, system CAs only in release builds (no user-installed CA can MITM the API key)
Data retention	Nothing persisted beyond the summary card's lifetime. No analytics, no crash reporting, no telemetry.

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Limitations

• Android only — this is an AccessibilityService + overlay app; no iOS equivalent is possible
• Official Reddit app only — tested against com.reddit.frontpage. Third-party Reddit clients are not supported
• Long posts may be partial — very long posts (more than ~6 screenfuls) hit the scroll cap; the card shows a "partial content" warning
• Scroll timing is conservative — the app waits 500ms after each swipe for Reddit's accessibility tree to update. This keeps capture reliable at the cost of speed

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Contributing

Issues and PRs welcome. See CLAUDE.md for architecture details, hard-won extraction rules, and the agent memory log (this repo is co-developed with AI agents — Codex and Claude — using a shared agent log convention).

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License

MIT — see LICENSE.

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Built with Anthropic Claude · Inspired by the universal need to not read a 47-paragraph Reddit post before knowing if it's worth it