The Threshing Floor

What is Thresh?

Thresh is a free, browser-based tool for collecting Reddit data. Point it at any subreddit, configure what you want to gather, and it hands you a clean dataset with a complete record of how it was collected. No accounts, no API keys, no code. Everything runs in your browser and stays on your machine. Built for researchers, journalists, and anyone who believes public discourse is worth studying carefully.

Quick Start

Enter a subreddit name and start collecting data in seconds. No API keys, no code, no setup.

How It Works

1 Thresh — Enter a subreddit and collection parameters

2 Harvest — Browse and search your collected data

3 Winnow — Analyze with word frequency charts and optional AI

4 Glean — Export as CSV or JSON with full provenance

Recent Collections

No collections yet. Start by threshing a subreddit.

Who Uses This — And How

Public Health Researcher

"What are people in r/mentalhealth talking about this month?"

Thresh: r/mentalhealth • Top • Past month • 100 posts Harvest: Sort by score to find what resonates most Winnow: Run Identify themes to map dominant concerns Glean: Export CSV with anonymized usernames for IRB-ready analysis

Journalist

"What questions are people asking in r/personalfinance about student loans?"

Thresh: r/personalfinance • Top • Past week • keyword: "student loans" Harvest: Sort by num_comments for the biggest conversations Winnow: Run Extract questions to find what people need answered Glean: Provenance.txt gives your editor a transparent methodology section

Graduate Student

"I need to compare discourse in r/science vs. r/conspiracy for my thesis."

Thresh: science, conspiracy • Top • Past year • keyword: "vaccine" Harvest: Compare upvote_ratio to see consensus vs. division Winnow: Run Sentiment analysis on each, then a Custom prompt comparing tone Glean: Two exports, each with its own provenance — cite both in your methods section

Community Organizer

"What are residents saying in our city's subreddit about the new transit plan?"

Thresh: r/yourcity • New • Past month • keyword: "transit" Harvest: Enable comments to hear the full conversation, not just headlines Winnow: Run Summarize discussion to distill what people actually want Glean: JSON export feeds directly into your own tools or dashboards

Subreddit

Enter the subreddit name without the r/ prefix. You can enter multiple separated by commas.

Sort By

Top = highest-scored posts (best for research). Hot = trending now. New = most recent. Rising = gaining momentum. Controversial = most divided (low upvote_ratio).

Time Filter

Controls which posts are eligible. Past week is a good default. Use Past year or All time for broader studies.

Max Posts

Posts per subreddit. Start with 25 to preview, then collect 100 for full analysis.

Keyword Filter

Searches post titles. Leave empty to collect everything matching your sort/time settings.

Include top-level comments (slower)

Collects the top comments on each post (depth 2, up to 50 per post). Essential for discourse analysis; skip for headline-level surveys.

Collection

No Data Yet

Collect some Reddit data first, then come back here to explore it.

Understanding Your Data — What Each Field Means

score — Net votes (upvotes minus downvotes). High score = community resonance. A post with 500 score was upvoted roughly 500 more times than it was downvoted.

upvote_ratio — Fraction of votes that were upvotes (0.0 to 1.0). A ratio of 0.95 means near-unanimous approval. Below 0.60 means the post is divisive — this is what "Controversial" sort finds.

num_comments — Total comments on the post. High comments + low score often means debate. High comments + high score means broad engagement.

created_utc — When the post was made (UTC timestamp). Exported as both Unix timestamp and ISO date for your analysis tools.

is_self — True if the post is text (a "self-post"). False if it's a link to an external site. Self-posts contain the author's own writing in the selftext field.

selftext — The body text of a self-post. This is the primary content for text analysis, sentiment, and theme extraction.

link_flair_text — Category label set by subreddit moderators (e.g., "Discussion", "News", "Vent"). Useful for filtering by post type in your analysis.

author — Reddit username. Anonymized by default in exports to protect privacy. Shown here for browsing context.

domain — Source domain for link posts (e.g., "nytimes.com") or "self.subreddit" for text posts. Useful for tracking which sources a community shares.

Title	Author	Score	Comments	Date

Nothing to Export

Collect some data first, then return here to export it.

No Data to Analyze Yet

Head over to Thresh to collect posts from a subreddit. Once you have a collection, come back here to explore word patterns and run AI analysis.

Built-in Analysis (No API Key Needed)

These tools run entirely in your browser at no cost:

Word Frequency Table — See the top 20 most common words across all post titles and bodies. Common stopwords ("the", "and", "is") are filtered out. Copyable with one click. Tells you what the community is literally talking about. Sortable Data Table — On the Harvest page, sort by any column. Sort by score for resonance, num_comments for engagement, or date for recency. Summary Statistics — Post count, average score, average comments, and date range are calculated automatically for every collection.

Claude AI Analysis (Requires API Key)

Claude reads your collected posts and produces structured research analysis. It goes beyond counting words — it understands meaning, groups ideas, and identifies patterns a human analyst would find.

Identify Themes — Groups posts into thematic clusters and names each theme. Perfect for a first pass on unfamiliar data. Example output: "Theme 1: Access to Care (23 posts) — Users describe long wait times, insurance denials…" Sentiment Analysis — Classifies overall tone (positive, negative, neutral, mixed) and identifies emotional patterns. Useful for tracking how a community feels about a topic over time. Summarize Discussion — Produces a structured summary: main points, areas of agreement, areas of disagreement, and standout observations. Good for briefings and literature reviews. Extract Questions — Pulls out the questions people are asking, categorized by topic. Reveals information gaps and unmet needs — invaluable for journalists and service providers. Custom Prompt — Ask Claude anything about your data. Your prompt is combined with a summary of up to 50 posts.

How to use this page:

Pick a collection from the dropdown below. The word frequency table will update immediately.
Review the word table — it shows you the 20 most common words in your data. Click "Copy" to grab it.
Optionally, run Claude AI analysis — choose an analysis type and click "Analyze with Claude." You'll need an Anthropic API key (click "API Key" to add one).
Copy or download the results. Use "Copy to Clipboard" for quick pasting, or "Save as .txt/.md" to keep a file for your records.

Step 1: Choose a Collection

Selecting a collection updates the word frequency table below.

Step 2: Choose Analysis Type

Requires an Anthropic API key. The word table works without one.

Word Frequency

No API key needed

Top 20 words from all post titles and bodies, with common stopwords removed. This is the literal vocabulary of the conversation — the words people actually use when talking about this topic.

Select a collection above to see word frequencies.

What Is This?

The Threshing Floor is a free, open-source tool for collecting and exporting Reddit data. It is designed for public health researchers, journalists, civic technologists, and anyone who believes public discourse is worth measuring.

It runs entirely in your browser. There is no server, no database, no account to create. Your data stays on your machine.

How It Works

Reddit's public pages serve JSON data alongside HTML. The Threshing Floor fetches this public data through a lightweight proxy (to handle browser security restrictions), then lets you browse, filter, and export it.

No Reddit API key is required. No authentication of any kind. The data collected is limited to what any person could see by visiting Reddit in a web browser.

The workflow follows four steps:

Thresh — Enter a subreddit and collection parameters
Harvest — Browse and search your collected data
Winnow — Analyze with word frequency and optional AI
Glean — Export as CSV or JSON with full provenance

Your Data & Storage

Everything is stored in your browser only. There is no server database, no account system, and no cloud sync. Specifically:

Collections (posts, comments, configuration) are saved in your browser's localStorage.
Anthropic API key (if you use Claude AI analysis) is stored in localStorage. It is never sent to any server except Anthropic's API directly.
Rate limit state and subreddit cache are also stored locally in your browser.

This means your data does not sync across browsers or devices. If you switch browsers, your collections will not follow.

Clearing Your History

To erase all Thresh data from your browser:

Open your browser's Settings (or press Ctrl+Shift+Delete / Cmd+Shift+Delete)
Navigate to Privacy & Security → Clear browsing data
Select "Cookies and site data" (this includes localStorage)
To clear only Thresh: go to your browser's Developer Tools (F12), open the Application tab, expand Local Storage, find the Thresh site, and delete individual keys or click Clear All

This will remove all saved collections, your API key (if stored), rate limit state, and cached subreddit data. It cannot be undone.

The Rate Limit Gauge

The Rate Limit gauge at the bottom of the sidebar tracks how many requests remain in your current Reddit rate limit window. Reddit allows 100 requests per minute to its public JSON endpoints.

Gold bar — plenty of requests remaining. Normal operation.
Yellow bar (below 30%) — requests are running low. Consider pausing collection.
Red pulsing bar (below 10%) — critical. Thresh will pause automatically if the limit is reached.
Cooldown timer — if you hit the limit, a countdown appears showing when requests resume. The collect button is disabled until the cooldown expires.

The rate limit resets automatically each minute. Under normal use (25–100 posts per collection), you will rarely see it drop below gold.

Ethical Considerations

Re-identification risk: Even with usernames removed, unique writing styles or specific details in posts may allow re-identification. Consider this when publishing findings.
IRB guidance: If you are conducting academic research, consult your Institutional Review Board about whether your data collection constitutes human subjects research.
Reddit's Terms: This tool accesses publicly available data. Please review Reddit's Terms of Service and API Terms regarding data collection and use.
Consent: Reddit users post publicly, but they may not expect their posts to be aggregated and analyzed. Handle data with care and respect.
Default anonymization: Exports anonymize usernames by default. You can disable this, but consider the implications before doing so.

Provenance

Every export includes a provenance.txt file documenting exactly how the data was collected: the subreddit, sort method, time filter, number of posts, date of collection, and any filters applied. This is the seal on every bundle — it gives you the language for a methods section, a transparency report, or a replication attempt.

AI Analysis (Optional)

The Winnow page offers optional AI-powered analysis using Claude (by Anthropic). To use this feature, you need your own Anthropic API key. Your key is stored only in your browser's local storage and is sent directly to Anthropic's API — it is never stored on any server.

Deploying Your Own

The Threshing Floor deploys to Cloudflare Pages with zero configuration:

Fork the repository on GitHub
Connect it to Cloudflare Pages
Set the build output directory to public
Deploy

That's it. No environment variables, no build step, no dependencies to install.

Citation

Thomas, J.E. (2026). The Threshing Floor: A browser-based tool for Reddit data collection and export. https://github.com/jethomasphd/The_Threshing_Floor

A Jacob E. Thomas artifact. Built with deliberate attention.

The Floor

What is Thresh?

Quick Start

How It Works

Recent Collections

Who Uses This — And How

Public Health Researcher

Journalist

Graduate Student

Community Organizer

Thresh

Collecting…

Harvest

No Data Yet

Glean

Nothing to Export

Export Preview

Winnow

No Data to Analyze Yet

Built-in Analysis (No API Key Needed)

Claude AI Analysis (Requires API Key)

Word Frequency

Claude's Analysis

About

What Is This?

How It Works

Your Data & Storage

Clearing Your History

The Rate Limit Gauge

Ethical Considerations

Provenance

AI Analysis (Optional)

Deploying Your Own

Citation

The Floor

What is Thresh?

Quick Start

How It Works

Recent Collections

Who Uses This — And How

Public Health Researcher

Journalist

Graduate Student

Community Organizer

Thresh

Collecting…

Harvest

No Data Yet

Glean

Nothing to Export

Export Preview

Winnow

No Data to Analyze Yet

Built-in Analysis (No API Key Needed)

Claude AI Analysis (Requires API Key)

Word Frequency

Claude's Analysis

About

What Is This?

How It Works

Your Data & Storage

Clearing Your History

The Rate Limit Gauge

Ethical Considerations

Provenance

AI Analysis (Optional)

Deploying Your Own

Citation

Anthropic API Key