Sources · Personal source · export guide
Export your Reddit data into a private AI brain
Reddit is often where people write most candidly. The GDPR export puts years of posts and comments, the subreddits you follow and what you saved into one archive — the brain reads it as voice and interests.
What a Reddit export holds — and what the brain makes of it
The export is a set of CSVs: posts and comments, subscribed subreddits and multireddits, friends, saved posts and your search history. The brain builder writes posts and comments into the voice layer, subreddits into interests, searches into the search log, and friends into people notes. Private messages contribute the sender and the date only; subjects and bodies are never selected.
What makes Reddit worth adding is contrast. The brain can put your Reddit voice beside your LinkedIn voice and show what you say when nobody is watching your job title.
Get the export
How to export your Reddit data
The exact clicks, as they are today. Platforms move menus; the engine’s source docs are updated when they do.
- 01
reddit.com/settings/data-request → request the full GDPR export
- 02
Download from the email link (typically under 48 h)
- 03
Drop the archive on Reddit in Studio’s Sources — or tell Claude Code or Codex “build my brain from this”. The source is detected by itself, even inside a combined archive.
Then, next month
An export is a snapshot. Drop a newer one and press Update: your edits and _notes/ are kept, and the update report says what changed.
Then ask it
What you can ask a brain built from Reddit
Examples, not promises: the answer is whatever your notes hold, and every answer cites the notes it came from. The more exports you add, the more these questions cross sources.
- Which subreddits have I been most active in, year by year?
- What questions have I asked on Reddit that I never got answered?
- Which saved posts are about a topic I later wrote about elsewhere?
limitReddit usually delivers within 48 hours but may take up to 30 days; the brain knows only what the export holds on that day.
Good to know
The honest answers.
Are my private messages in the brain? Only as a signal — who and when. PM subjects and bodies are never selected by any mapping rule.
Is my username linked to my real name? The brain is yours and runs on your machine; the Reddit export joins the same identity note as your other exports because you put them in the same brain. Nothing is published or uploaded.
Start
Your Reddit export already exists. Turn it into a brain.
Free and open source. Start with John’s demo brain while your export arrives.
Second Brain Studio · Mac (Apple silicon and Intel), Windows and Linux · free · MIT
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