Comic Hunter — Reddit Poller (Node.js)

Polls Reddit JSON feeds for free/cheap comics and collectibles. No Reddit account or API key needed — uses Reddit's public JSON endpoint. Scores posts by keyword and location, saves to Postgres, and fires Discord webhook alerts.

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Setup

1. Install dependencies

This project uses npm workspaces for monorepo management. A single install command handles everything:

npm install

2. Configure environment

Create a .env file in the project root:

DATABASE_URL=your_neon_postgres_connection_string
DISCORD_WEBHOOK_URL=your_discord_webhook_url

Database: The app uses Neon (cloud Postgres) in development and AWS RDS in production. Run npx prisma db push after setting DATABASE_URL to create the schema.

Discord webhook:

1. Open any Discord channel
2. Channel Settings → Integrations → Webhooks → New Webhook
3. Copy the URL

3. Run

For development (recommended):

# Single command runs API server + dashboard + Reddit poller
npm run dev:manual

Individual processes:

# Reddit poller (saves alerts to database)
npm start

# API server only (port 3001)
npm run server

# Dashboard only (port 5173)
npm run dashboard

Verify the API is up:

curl http://localhost:3001/api/health

Production build:

npm run build

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API

The Express server exposes three endpoints:

Method	Path	Description
GET	/api/health	Liveness check
GET	/api/alerts	Paginated alert list with filters
GET	/api/alerts/:id	Single alert by id

GET /api/alerts query params:

Param	Default	Description
page	1	Page number
limit	20	Results per page (max 100)
minScore	0	Minimum score filter
localOnly	false	"true" to show only local posts
subreddit	—	Filter by subreddit name
since	—	ISO timestamp — only alerts newer than this (for live polling)

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Edit SCORE_THRESHOLD in lib/config.ts:

Threshold	What you get
5	Everything — very noisy
10	Good starting point
15	Only strong matches
20+	Quiet — only clear wins

To add content keywords, edit the KEYWORDS array in lib/keywords.ts:

["your keyword", pointValue],

To add location keywords (South/Central NJ area), edit LOCATION_KEYWORDS in lib/config.ts.

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Running 24/7

tmux (simplest):

tmux new -s comics
npm start
# Ctrl+B then D to detach

tmux new -s api
npm run server
# Ctrl+B then D to detach

PM2 (recommended):

npm install -g pm2
pm2 start reddit-poller.ts --name comic-hunter-poller
pm2 start api-server.ts --name comic-hunter-api
pm2 save
pm2 startup

Using Turborepo for production:

# Build optimized assets
npm run build

# Deploy built dashboard to S3/CloudFront
# Run API server on EC2/ECS

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What's next

• AWS Cognito auth — per-user settings and seen state
• eBay flip value — price lookup on local posts once API key arrives
• Facebook Marketplace — Playwright scraper, geo-targeted listings
• Buy Nothing — Facebook Buy Nothing group scraper (same session as Marketplace)