How to Build a Reddit Lead Discovery Bot with N8N and OpenAI — Step by Step

By Monk Media One Tech | AI Automation Agency, Ahmedabad, India

Find high-intent prospects on Reddit before your competitors do with a Reddit Lead Discovery Bot. This full tutorial includes an N8N workflow, OpenAI scoring prompt, and subreddit targeting strategy.

Reddit is where people go when they actually need help. Not to browse, not to scroll — to ask real questions and get real answers.

"Can anyone recommend a good accountant in Mumbai?"
"We're looking for an N8N developer, does anyone know someone?"
"What's the best AI automation agency in India for a Series A startup?"

These are real purchase-intent queries happening on Reddit right now, in subreddits your competitors aren't monitoring. The people asking them are hours away from making a buying decision.

We built a Reddit Lead Discovery Bot system that finds these posts daily, scores them for relevance and intent, and delivers only the high-quality leads — saving hours of manual monitoring.

Here's the full build.

How Reddit Lead Discovery Works

The process is straightforward:

1. Monitor specific subreddits for new posts and comments
2. Filter for keywords related to your services
3. Use AI to score each match for purchase intent (not just keyword presence)
4. Deliver high-scoring leads to your team via Slack or WhatsApp
5. Track which leads were followed up and what happened

The difference between this and a simple keyword alert is the AI scoring step. A keyword alert would fire for every mention of "AI automation" — including tutorials, news articles, and technical discussions. The AI step filters for posts where someone is actively looking to buy or hire.

Subreddit Targeting Strategy

First, identify which subreddits your ideal customers use. Don't just target the obvious ones.

For AI automation agency (like us):

High-intent subreddits:

• r/Entrepreneur — founders looking for solutions
• r/smallbusiness — SMB owners with problems to solve
• r/automation — people actively exploring automation
• r/n8n — users wanting custom workflows built
• r/AIAssistants — buyers evaluating AI tools
• r/startups — Series A/B companies scaling operations

Geographic subreddits (for India-focused business):

• r/india (business/tech posts)
• r/Ahmedabad, r/mumbai, r/bangalore
• r/IndiaInvestments (if you serve BFSI)

Signal keywords to monitor:

• "looking for", "recommend", "hire", "agency", "need help with", "anyone know"
• Combined with: "automation", "AI", "workflow", "chatbot", "N8N", "Zapier"

Negative keywords to filter out:

• "tutorial", "learning", "how does", "explain to me", "student", "homework"

The N8N Workflow

Workflow Overview

Schedule Trigger (every 6 hours)
        │
        ▼
Reddit API — Fetch new posts
(multiple subreddits in parallel)
        │
        ▼
Merge results
        │
        ▼
Filter by keywords
        │
        ▼
OpenAI — Score intent (0-10)
        │
        ▼
Filter score > 7
        │
        ▼
Check against "already seen" list
(Google Sheets)
        │
        ▼
New high-intent lead?
    │         │
   YES        NO
    │          └── Stop
    ▼
Format lead card
    │
    ├── Send to Slack #leads channel
    ├── Send WhatsApp notification
    └── Log to Google Sheets CRM

Step 1 — Schedule Trigger

Set the workflow to run every 6 hours. Reddit posts older than 6 hours are less valuable — the window for being first to respond narrows quickly.

In N8N, add a Schedule Trigger node:

• Mode: Every X hours
• Hours: 6

Step 2 — Reddit API Calls (Parallel)

Reddit's public API (no authentication needed for reading) returns the latest posts from any subreddit in JSON.

Add multiple HTTP Request nodes (one per subreddit), connected in parallel using N8N's Merge node:

// N8N HTTP Request node
URL: https://www.reddit.com/r/entrepreneur/new.json?limit=25&t=day
Method: GET
Headers: { "User-Agent": "LeadBot/1.0" }

Do this for each subreddit you're monitoring. The response includes post title, body text, author, URL, upvotes, number of comments, and timestamp.

Step 3 — Keyword Filter (Code Node)

// N8N Code node — keyword pre-filter
const posts = $input.all();

const HIGH_INTENT_KEYWORDS = [
  'looking for', 'recommend', 'hire', 'need help',
  'anyone know', 'best agency', 'developer for',
  'build for us', 'outsource', 'agency for'
];

const TOPIC_KEYWORDS = [
  'automation', 'ai', 'n8n', 'workflow', 'chatbot',
  'zapier', 'make.com', 'integrations', 'bot'
];

const NEGATIVE_KEYWORDS = [
  'tutorial', 'learning', 'student', 'homework',
  'just launched my', 'proud to announce'
];

const filtered = posts.filter(post => {
  const text = (post.json.title + ' ' + post.json.selftext).toLowerCase();
  
  const hasNegative = NEGATIVE_KEYWORDS.some(kw => text.includes(kw));
  if (hasNegative) return false;
  
  const hasIntent = HIGH_INTENT_KEYWORDS.some(kw => text.includes(kw));
  const hasTopic = TOPIC_KEYWORDS.some(kw => text.includes(kw));
  
  return hasIntent && hasTopic;
});

return filtered;

This reduces 25 posts per subreddit to typically 1–3 candidates worth AI-scoring.

Step 4 — AI Intent Scoring (OpenAI Node)

This is the key step. For each post that passes the keyword filter, send it to OpenAI for intent scoring:

System prompt:
You are a B2B lead qualification expert. Score this Reddit post for purchase intent.

Score from 0-10:
- 0-3: Not a lead (tutorial, general discussion, complaint, news)
- 4-6: Weak signal (exploring options, not actively buying)  
- 7-8: Good lead (actively looking for a solution or vendor)
- 9-10: Hot lead (urgent need, ready to hire/buy, specific budget mentioned)

Also extract:
- Lead type: "looking_to_hire" | "seeking_recommendation" | "evaluating_options" | "not_a_lead"
- Urgency: "immediate" | "soon" | "exploring" | "none"
- Budget signals: any mention of budget, price range, or company size
- Best response approach: 1 sentence on how to engage

Return JSON only. No explanation.

Reddit post:
Title: {{ $json.title }}
Body: {{ $json.selftext }}
Subreddit: {{ $json.subreddit }}

Response example:

{
  "score": 8,
  "lead_type": "looking_to_hire",
  "urgency": "soon",
  "budget_signals": "Series A startup, 'reasonable budget'",
  "response_approach": "Comment with a brief case study of similar startup work, offer a discovery call"
}

Step 5 — Deduplication (Google Sheets)

Before alerting, check if this post was already seen in a previous run:

// N8N Code node — dedup check
const post_id = $json.id;
const seen_ids = $input.all().map(row => row.json.post_id);  // From Sheets read node

if (seen_ids.includes(post_id)) {
  return [];  // Already seen, skip
}

return [$input.first()];  // New lead, continue

Step 6 — Lead Notification

Format a clear lead card and send to Slack and WhatsApp:

Slack message format:

🎯 *New Reddit Lead — Score: 8/10*

*Post:* How do I find a good N8N automation developer?
*Subreddit:* r/entrepreneur
*Posted:* 2 hours ago
*Urgency:* Soon
*Budget signals:* Series A startup

*URL:* https://reddit.com/r/entrepreneur/...

*Suggested approach:* Comment with a brief case study of similar startup work, offer a discovery call

---
✅ Mark as followed up: [link to sheet]

Full N8N Workflow JSON (Import This)

{
  "name": "Reddit Lead Discovery",
  "nodes": [
    {
      "name": "Schedule",
      "type": "n8n-nodes-base.scheduleTrigger",
      "parameters": {
        "rule": { "interval": [{ "field": "hours", "hoursInterval": 6 }] }
      }
    },
    {
      "name": "Fetch r/entrepreneur",
      "type": "n8n-nodes-base.httpRequest",
      "parameters": {
        "url": "https://www.reddit.com/r/entrepreneur/new.json?limit=25",
        "method": "GET",
        "headers": { "User-Agent": "LeadDiscovery/1.0" }
      }
    }
  ]
}

(Full workflow JSON available — contact us and we'll send the complete importable file.)

Results from Our Own System

We built this system for ourselves and for clients. Here's what 30 days of data looked like for an AI automation agency:

Two deals from a system that took 2 days to build and costs ~₹500/month to run. The ROI math is straightforward.

Important: Reddit Engagement Rules

Finding leads is step one. Responding correctly is step two.

What works:

• Genuine, helpful comments that answer the question first
• Mentioning your agency/service naturally after providing value
• Sending a DM only after a helpful public comment
• Sharing relevant case studies (link to your blog, not just your homepage)

What gets you banned:

• Obvious promotional comments with no value
• Immediate "hire us" responses
• Bulk DMing everyone who posts
• Creating fake accounts to upvote your own comments

Reddit communities can smell automation and self-promotion. Be a genuine participant who also happens to run an agency, not a bot.

We're Monk Media One Tech — AI automation agency, Ahmedabad. We build lead generation automation, N8N workflows, and AI systems.

Book a free discovery call: monkmediaone.tech/contact
📞 +91 88668 19349 | hello@monkmediaone.tech