Statefulness

Standard automoderators are stateless: they evaluate each post or comment in isolation without memory of past events. Modegator brings statefulness to subreddit automation by providing built-in storage actions that interface directly with a persistent Redis database.

By using storage actions, you can track user actions, count events, and store persistent flags that can be referenced in later rules, scheduled tasks, or UI actions.

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How Statefulness Works

Statefulness in Modegator relies on a two-step pattern:

1. Write State: A rule, scheduled task, or UI action writes or updates a value in storage (e.g., using increment_counter or store_value).
2. Read & Compare State: Another rule retrieves that stored value dynamically during condition evaluation using special prefixes:
   • counter_[key]: Fetches a numeric counter from storage (evaluated as a number).
   • custom_[key]: Fetches a generic value from storage (evaluated as a string).

Placeholders (like {{author}}) can be dynamically resolved inside the key names themselves (e.g., comment_count_{{author}}), allowing you to track state for individual users.

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Example: Stateful Comment Gate

Below is a complete, valid configuration demonstrating how to enforce a gate that locks link submissions for users who have not participated sufficiently in the community.

version: "1.0"
name: "Stateful Comment Gate"
description: "Locks link posts unless the user has at least 5 comments in the subreddit."

rules:
  # STEP 1: Store/Increment State on Comment
  - name: "Track User Comment Count"
    trigger:
      event: "CommentSubmit"
    conditions: [] # Run always on every comment
    actions:
      - type: "increment_counter"
        key: "comment_count_{{author}}" # Resolves to e.g., comment_count_YashArote

  # STEP 2: Fetch and Check State on Post Submit
  - name: "Enforce Comment Gate"
    trigger:
      event: "PostSubmit"
    conditions:
      # Check link type
      - field: "post_link_type"
        operator: "=="
        value: "link"
      # Fetch the user's specific comment counter from Redis and check if it is < 5
      - field: "counter_comment_count_{{author}}" 
        operator: "<"
        value: 5
    actions:
      # If they don't have 5 comments, remove the post
      - type: "remove_post"
        spam: false
      # Reply explaining why it was removed
      - type: "submit_comment"
        text: "Hi u/{{author}}, link submissions are locked until you have commented at least 5 times in this community."
        distinguish: true

Explanation of the Flow

1. Step 1 (Track User Comment Count):

   • Listens to the CommentSubmit trigger.
   • For every new comment submitted by a user, the increment_counter action is triggered.
   • The key name uses the {{author}} placeholder (e.g. comment_count_YashArote). The engine increments this specific user's Redis entry by 1.

2. Step 2 (Enforce Comment Gate):

   • Listens to the PostSubmit trigger.
   • First condition: post_link_type == "link" checks if the new post is a link.
   • Second condition: counter_comment_count_{{author}} < 5 reads the current integer counter from Redis for this author and checks if it is less than 5.
   • If both conditions match, the post is automatically removed, and a sticky reply is submitted to inform the user about the gate.

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Integrating State with Scheduled Tasks

Scheduled tasks (crons) are ideal for resetting or sweeping state database entries periodically.

For example, you can schedule a nightly reset of daily interaction counts:

version: "1.0"
name: "Nightly Reset Tasks"
description: "Demonstrates sweeping state with scheduled cron tasks."

scheduled:
  - name: "Reset Daily Counter"
    cron: "0 0 * * *"
    actions:
      - type: "store_value"
        key: "daily_flag"
        value: "reset"